BY DAN

Joe Roddy has signed a new deal with the Canberra Raiders, and it’s keeping him here for a long time.

That’s the thing that stands out in the club announcement. Roddy will be in Canberra until the end of the 2030 season. That makes him the longest tenured first grader by quite a length (even longer than Jed Stuart!) and he’s only played four games. That’s may change, given the Raiders are reportedly seeking to resolve the contract status of a host of players at the moment, but it’s noteworthy how much time the Raiders are putting into Roddy. What are they trying to tell us?

The length is partially reflective of where Roddy is in his career. He’s only 21, and only has four first grade appearances to his name. It’s as yet, unclear what his ceiling is, but he’s already shown that he can be effective in first grade. It’s important to note that we don’t know the structure of this deal – I would be surprised if this deal wasn’t laden with options in both direction that allow for early re-negotiation.

I suspect part of the appeal is ensuring the club can extract the most value from the early part of Roddy’s career. The Raiders are effectively taking a punt that he’ll outperform this deal in the back half of it, allowing them to continue to find space for players like Young, Strange, Pattie et al as they come under the view of the expansion teams in coming years. For his part Roddy is probably just happy to have certainty in his career.

That gamble is made easier for the club by the knowledge of seeing his development up close over recent years. It’s also supported by the ‘high floor’ that Roddy has demonstrated in his initial forays into the top line. At this stage he’s not a barnstorming line-runner, nor a ball-playing forward, though he’s shown glimpses of both through the grades. But he’s demonstrated that in defence in particular, he is capable and safe both in the middle and on the edge, and has a work rate that can’t be underestimated. Both of those are things the club should put a premium on.

Further, Roddy provides critical flexibility across the backrow. When he came onto the field against the Tigers he was able to slot in for Noah Martin with relative comfort. He’s played middle and edge in NSW Cup depending on need. He’s not a massive person, so it’s unlikely he’ll be a bell-cow middle, but as someone that can fill in off the bench as both an edge and a backrower he’d be valuable. With the game always moving faster, the Raiders need to go with it, and have some middles that are more Alan Tongue that Josh Papalii.

But four years is a remarkably long time. With Jed Stuart signing a similarly long deal, it does make us wonder if the Raiders are trying to engineer roster flexibility by locking-in low-cost depth to create medium term cap space. Roddy may end up a star at the end of the deal, but right now he’s depth. Signing players at the bottom of the chart to long-term, presumably below-market deals is one way for the club to manage their roster to provide space to keep their stars. And if one of those young players outplays the money their own, then the Milk get to capture that surplus value.

That doesn’t mean that will happen though, and the counterfactual is that the Raiders load up their roster with replacement-level players on long-term deals while letting higher upside players go. That concerned us a lot with Jed Stuart’s long deal. I’m more positive about Roddy’s potential, but the risks are still greater than zero that he never outplays ‘fine’. Premiership rosters aren’t built on fine. They’re built on players outplaying their monetary value.

Is this a deliberate strategy, or one driven by the individual circumstances of two negotiations? Does it represent pro-active roster engineering or a reaction to its inability to pull in stars and therefore over-investing in whatever talent it can find? Right now we don’t know, but it’s worth considering over the coming weeks as more deals land (or don’t). But if we’re right, and the Raiders are using these deals to maximise their medium-term cap space, then the benefits come when these players outperform their contracts. The Raiders are gambling that Stuart, and now Roddy will do that. I’m surer about Roddy.

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