BY DAN

Hello and welcome to our offseason series on the six big questions facing the Raiders in 2026. This is part II of the series. You can read part I here and part II here.

Owen Pattie is the future.

As much as Ethan Strange. As much as Savelio Tamale, or Kaeo Weekes, or Noah Martin, or whomever emerges out of the Ethan Sanders/Coby Black positional battle. The youth movement is emerging like the first cracks of daylight. Owen Pattie’s success will be determinative of how close the Raiders can get to the sun, and to fulfilling the promise and the plan that they’ve put in place.

Pattie has everything you could want from a modern hooker. He’s got impeccable passing off the ground, able to hit a first receiver 20 yards away on the chest. Both directions, easy as. He can kick, slotting more 40-20s last year in limited minutes than most starting halves managed playing 80 minutes a week. He can run, picking up more metres per minute than the famously run-focused Tom Starling did.

And he can create; that’s obvious watching him with ball in hand. He schemed his way to three try-assists and seven try involvements last season, again hamstrung by limited minutes, and a clear emphasis to make sure Jamal Fogarty ate before he did. The Raiders were structured that way, but not anymore.

Fogarty’s departure, and the relative lack of seniority in the spine, brings a less clear hierarchy this season. This may provide Pattie with more opportunity to sing and dance in the spotlight. The question becomes for Canberra is how ready he is for more responsibility? How much will he direct the team around the ground, make decisions in red zone attack? How will that impact the development of the Black/Sanders duo?

The challenge for Pattie is not the ability to do, it’s when to do it. That’s the ultimate test of young talent across all sports. Cricketer Cam Green is a great example; no one would doubt his talent. But watching him suffer temporary insanity in Brisbane/Melbourne/Sydney was a great example of how talent needs to be combined with experience. Reps help you learn how to keep your head in chaos, and learn when there are diems to be carped.

Pattie wasn’t perfect at this. On occasion he took options that weren’t as there as he thought – a function of getting used to playing with the best athletes in the country for the first time. Sometimes his identification of opportunities wasn’t aligned with his teammates, seeing him jump out for something only he noticed. Other times he saw things that were genuinely there, but at the moment lower risk pathways were the road to travel.

No better was this shown than in the Qualifying final when he took the blind on the last in golden point instead of a zeroing a pass to Jamal Fogarty for a field goal. It seemed there, it could have been a game winning moment, but the safe play was out the back, and it’s one of the many moments Canberra got wrong in the game. It wasn’t the only time our collective hearts sank like the Titanic, but it still hurts. Us and no doubt him.

The key here is managing that learning process. You don’t want to beat that opportunism out of him. He’s got more talent in his hands and feet than most people in the game. As he gets closer to Stick’s 50 game theory, he’ll be better at picking those moments. Seeing the crevices and cracks that others don’t will eventually become a weapon as he works out which of these are real and which are pyrite.

There will be a challenge for the club in managing that evolution. Pattie, as a rake, will take up space. As new halves are trying to work out how they fit in, it’s a risk to look at your young rake and say ‘More Cowbell’. Certainty of role and authority is a key thing for young halves, and if Pattie is still testing the edges of his space, bringing noise to people who need peace and quiet, then it could impact on Sanders and co.

But having a young hooker with these creative instincts and abilities isn’t something you want to cage. It will be a test of Stuart, and attacking Coach Justin Giteau, to find clarity and scope for all of these young players to find their way while still keeping the team on a winning trajectory.

Pattie has some learning to do, and managing the competing learning trajectories of players and challenges of winning and growing at the same time will test both him, and the club’s coaching staff. But when (not if) he works out his space, and his timing, he and the Raiders will be successful. And then we can all bask in the warmth of his glow.

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