BY DAN

We here at Sportress HQ love a detail we can mull over.

The Canberra Times revealed just one of these in the Adam Cook deal over the weekend. As we’d all been wondering, Cook wouldn’t be part of the top 30 in 2025, but will be elevated after the season. As of 2026 he’s a rolled gold member of the Raiders squad. This revelation might seem minor to most, but it has us thinking about what it might mean for the future of Canberra’s halves.

To an extent we’d assumed there was something going on when Cook was left of the top 30 list released last week. At the time we’d written that perhaps it was reflective of a contact still being finalised. Turns out we were wrong and instead he’s taking the same ‘contract on a promise of elevation’ that Noah Martin, Michael Asomua, and Vena Patuki-Case have signed in recent times.

It’s becoming a bit of a habit for the Milk, and perhaps part of a strategy to get people to come (like Patuki-Case) or to stay (like Martin and Asomua). It puts a lot of faith in the scouting department’s ability to project potential pathways to performance. That’s a risk, but also a feature. We’ve said before that Canberra have always needed to throw a haymakers with their recruitment strategy. Giving promises that other clubs might not, or don’t have to, is just another facet of that.

I guess this applies to Cook. While I wouldn’t have thought he was in too many teams sights come 1 November, he’d done enough for a smart team to come in and snatch him for the back end of their 30. We won’t make the pitch in full (if you’re keen you can read it here or here), but he’d proven himself a capable half last year, good enough to be competing for a role in first grade somewhere. At just 23 there’s plenty of upside there. Squint and you could have a real goer.

Which, presumably, is what the Raiders are doing (squinting that is). If you listened to Assistant Coach Brock Shepperd on the Fifth and Last podcast at the end of the season, he spoke of the change that had come to Cook’s game over the season with the top squad.

At the start of the year he was a Cup player. He was doing Cup things. He didn’t have control in his game. I know he was lighting up the stats [but] back end of the year he’d learned, not how to be a first grader, because he couldn’t do it consistently, but he progressed so much in that middle part of the year, just to control, and kick.

Evidently the Raiders are taking that progress and projecting it into the future (Stonks!). It a qualified gamble. I’m sure Cook isn’t burning a hole in the Cap. But the club obviously think he’ll be important enough to take up a precious top 30 spot come 2026.

When it looked like Cook would be part of the top 30 for 2025 we’d noted that three halfbacks in the top 30 was probably going to result in an unbalanced squad, particularly if Kaeo Weekes was going to be considered in the broader mix of creators. A year beyond that problem, it’s likely to be an equally if not more complex situation. Jamal Fogarty would presumably still be there, entering the last year of his deal, keen to get paid again. Ethan Sanders, lured to the club on a promise of a pathway, would be a year into his deal and keen to take over. Cook would now be a third wheel in an already tense situation.

That of course is right how Stuart would want it. He’s long been a believer that competition brings out the best. Cook will ostensibly be competing with Ethan Sander for the right to be next. But Jamal Fogarty will be 32 entering that season, and he can’t go on forever. The future is closer than you think.

The thing that interests me about this is that Jamal Fogarty’s deal for 2026 is actually an option. It’s apparently contingent on the number of game he plays. We do not know what the magic number is, but given Fogs has played 15, 24, and 14 games in the three respective seasons he played for the Milk, we can imagine there’s a world in which Cook’s elevation ends up being one of two halfbacks rather than one of three.

You might be tempted to say that it’s clear that Cook will be the depth in this scenario. But Cook is still young, and has shown rapid improvement. He might be ahead of Sanders right now just because of how much football he’s played against adults, both in NRL and Q Cup footy. There’s certainty and comfort in the idea he’s just the Frawley/Williams in this scenario, but I doubt that’s how Adam is thinking. There’s every chance we could get to the end of next season and the club have comfort that the future is now.

Sorry, before you get carried away we’re not suggesting Fogarty is about to get pushed aside, Sanders relegated, or Cook announced for State of Origin. The truth is we don’t know. It’s a fluid environment, and when it was just Fogarty and Sanders for 2026 we made sense of it through King and Heir. Now with a third contender to the throne coming to the top 30 as the King’s grip potentially loosens it introduces a variable to proceedings. It’s a long way off, but we’ll be watching 2025 with this in mind.

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