BY DAN

Ricky Stuart can smell it. The certainty. One or two more sane choices taken from his spine in 2025 and he’d have had a good shot at a premiership. A bit more clarity, a bit more footy IQ. We’re *this* close. One more move, one more coach’s plan, implemented with the cold precision to which he requires, and that’s it baby. Glory.

And that’s why Ricky Stuart is going to start Jayden Brailey.

Look, this isn’t based on any reporting, or any knowledge from the scene. I have no rational reason to know this is occurring. Maybe I’ve got a hunch, maybe that’s based on something. The fraud masquerading as a public intellectual, Malcolm Gladwell, once wrote a book about how people develop expertise through experience, and get to a point where they don’t even follow the bouncing ball in their mind. Maybe this is just ten thousand hours of thinking about the Raiders coming out via the keyboard.

But I’ve got this vibe; something about how Jayden Brailey has been so prominent in the media over the off-season. Something about Sticky’s promise of a youth movement always being a plan made against his own instincts honed over a lifetime in the game. You can almost feel Stick reaching for the lever marked ‘known quantities’.

Is this abandonment of the youth movement, pitting the ease of adjustment of one player – Ethan Sanders – against that of another – Owen Pattie – the player most likely to miss out if Brailey is in the round one team list. Or is it a recognition that necessity drove the bus in 2025, and for the benefit of Pattie, and the side, more minutes in Cup is needed?

It’s a complex question. My colours are nailed to the mast on this. Owen Pattie is the future, and potentially an epoch-defining player. Give him the minutes, the ball and the chances to make things happen. Make the investment now. It may not pay off tomorrow, but it will pay off.

But others will tell you that picking ‘what’s in the box’ is a pathway to paradox. Pattie could be anything, he could even be a boat! What do you need in a side with a young spine and a great pack but a heady vet at the ruck making sure you get certainty in the circuit? Make no mistake it’s no clear cut choice. Good men will die for the banners of all kings.

In a sense each option is imperfect. Tom Starling can fit in everywhere and nowhere, an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in 95kg of pure-bred muscle. He holds the middle defence together, can go big minutes, can’t really pass and would be best deployed at the back end of halves running against exhausted defenders. This is only more the case with the potentially returning low-tide of Vlandoball.

Pattie brings a brilliance in ball play, and a kicking game that is not matched anywhere else in the side and notably absent because of departures. He’s still learning when to make what choice, and that’s not going to help Ethan Sanders, nor Coby Black, run the show. Pattie is not perfect, and won’t be this season. His youth makes that near impossible. And what’s better for a young player than lots of minutes….in Cup.

And maybe that’s why Sticky will end up with Brailey. Years of making the right decision make more habit than choice. He’ll chart a clear course for Sanders et al to follow, and the club will always head in the right direction. Will it be eating your future for the glory of the moment? Maybe. Will it be lowering the roof because no one in the spine can kick a forty-twenty? Possibly. Will it be potentially ‘going slow’ when Peter V’Landys is gerryrigging the game to roll down hill. But maybe Stick sees that as a hero’s errand not needed if everyone just does their job.

And maybe pretending this is all a zero sum game is silly. Maybe Brailey starts. Maybe Pattie does. Maybe Starling ends up playing more minutes than either of them. It doesn’t really matter in January, and maybe I need to look up from the depth charts and wait for someone to play a second of footy. What matters is that all three will shape the season in ways we can’t quite see yet. The Raiders are chasing heaven, and every rake will have a hand on the wheel.

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