BY DAN

The Canberra Raiders season to this point has been remarkable. When a team does something out of the ordinary, the commentariat searches for an explanation of this. So far popular explanations of the Raiders success have fallen at the feet of Ricky Stuart. But other explanations of how Canberra have got where they are, are worthy of consideration.

Common discourse for the Raiders success this year usually start with Ricky Stuart. Andrew Voss made the claim subsequent to Canberra’s 14th win of the season recently, noting:

Ricky is having his best year as a coach… Any coach makes individuals better, and they’re all playing at their very best.

It echoed the comments of Matthew Johns earlier in the year, who claimed that it was Stuart’s best year, but with a more nuanced reasoning. The other Johns said:

This is Stuart’s finest coaching season because like the young Raiders team that he enjoyed dominance with as a player, they’ve recognised the changes in the game and exactly the kind of football they need to play to be the best. The fast rucks and six-again rule has made the area of defensive vulnerability not on the edges, but right through the centre of the field and the Raiders know it and how to expose it.

While it’s understandable that you might come to this conclusion, this is almost always the starting point with outside assessments of the Raiders. Stuart is the biggest name at the club, the most recognisable face. As the coach he has a huge influence on how the team goes, so it stands to reason that he would have had an impact. It can lead to Stuart being given credit as a matter of course, and the reasoning worked back. After all, Matty Johns has previously made the pitch that Stuart was having his best year of coaching…..in 2022.

So it can feel overly simple to lay it solely here. Not that it’s not part of the story – that seems indisputable to me. But I would caution anyone placing it only here. As Stick was keen to point out in the post-match press conference on Saturday, none of us were there during pre-season. It’s hard to attribute responsibility when you don’t really know what was done.

Of course, it’s just as likely to do with personnel. Several players are having career years. Tom Starling, Hudson Young, Corey Horsburgh and Kaeo Weekes are arguably at the peak of their powers (so far). You could make the argument that Joe Tapine is maintaining an astounding ‘peak’ . Ethan Strange is proving the promise is worth pursuing. Generally everyone is *better* than last year (except maybe Jamal Fogarty? That’s an interesting chat for another time). Did I mention Kaeo Weekes? Through Kaeo all things are possible, so jot that down.

Now of course we would put a good chunk of this down to coaching, but it’s always hard to separate that from the natural development of players. Strange is in his second year of first grade – the game would naturally slow down for a young half at this point. Young, Starling and Horsburgh are all in their primes. Weekes has gotten to play the same position throughout the season instead of shuttling around the spine. Joey Taps is ensconced in a prime that started in 2020. There’s a contributing factor of good timing here too, as well as the structural ‘salt-and-pepper’ stylings of putting young with old, spry with experience.

Coach Stuart’s strategic oversight, and adjustment to an ever changing game is definitely part of the story (though maybe chill on celebrating him for getting on to Vlando ball in 2025). Roster management and development is key here too. The right mix of experience and youth, the timing of players entering, leaving, and staying in their prime are important factors. Health matters too – despite suffering a few substantial injuries, Canberra have used the equal fewest players of any team in the league (24).

A final, and somewhat linked aspect of this was noted by Tom Starling recently but for the life of me I can’t find the quote (trust me? Oh wait! Thanks to T Mac for reminding where I saw it) when he noted that a bunch of the team have been playing together for some time, and when you look at the starting line up most week’s that is very true. Much of this group has been around each other since ‘Rona in some form. In fact of the normal starting 13, almost all of them debuted with the club between 2019 and 2021 (Kris, Timoko, Starling, Horse, Huddo, Savage) or before. Jamal Fogarty a relative newcomer, is in his fourth season with the club.

Stick is often keen to note that it takes somewhere around fifty games for a player to get up to speed with the NRL. Well the same logic would suggest it takes a few games to get used to each other. This is often the angle pushed by GAIN LINE Analytics, a rugby union (booo) focused management consultancy that uses a proprietary measurement (meaning we can’t see behind the hood at what they’re measuring) to argue cohesion is a key determinant in team performance.

It makes logical sense but we’re not numbers measuring dudes, and are inherently sceptical of any entity referring to itself as ‘management consultants’. However, it’s worth considering as an idea, and allows us to take a more long-term focus in explaining where 2025 came from. It’s not just development. It’s not just roster. But also a broader cohesion and understanding that comes from a good chunk of the roster playing the best part of 80 games together.

It’s not a comprehensive explanation. Approaches like these tend to be retrospective and teleological, using the outcome as the starting point. There weren’t many people (including me) predicting this sort of season from the Milk, meaning as ‘obvious’ as these signs are they are still a dramatic shift in a short period of time. The most likely explanation – it’s a convoluted mish-mash of variables, structural change, and luck, doesn’t make for a good social media clip. But it seems reasonable to say something has changed, for the better.

At least for now. We won’t know how sustainable they are without the passage of weeks and months. But whatever the causes we get to enjoy the ride in the meantime.

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