When the Roosters told Sam Walker to take a hike earlier this week, all eyes, including ours, shifted to Ethan Strange.
The connection wasn’t explicit. No one at the Roosters had spoken publicly on the matter, not that they could. Tampering is a thing as long as your name isn’t Gus Gould. Ethan is under contract for the Raiders, and wouldn’t be on the free market unti next year. So if the Roosters were going to ply him from the comforts of a Canberra spring, then they’d have to do it the old fashioned way; through the media.
Of course, drawing the connection didn’t even require the Roosters impetus. His Dad and his sister are employed by Nic Politis. He was a Roosters ‘junior’. Why wouldn’t Ethan want to go to Bondi, make money hand over fist and be around his family more?
It led to people hyperventilating. Some extremely handsome lunatics even suggested the Raiders needed to make retaining Ethan are priority for 2027 before he hits the open market (I still think that, by the way). It was all born from a fear, exacerbated by Milford/Wighton/Young, of Canberra making talent great, only for it to look elsewhere for a home. We’ve been there too many times before to just hope it would be fine.
But Ethan, being the gorgeous and effective five-eighth he is, decided he’d answer the media on this. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, he denied it with a straightforward what the hell?
I’m with the Raiders and I’m loving it with Ricky so I honestly have no idea what that’s all about. I don’t even know where that’s come from.
To bed you say? I hope so. It was good to see Strange rebuff the suggestion so strongly, even if the idea that he couldn’t understand the connection reflected a comical naiveté. It was also interesting to see him so strongly put his lot in with Stuart, further emphasising the importance of Stuart to the Raiders recruitment and retention, and his ongoing reputation across the league.
As we noted when we wrote earlier, there is a lot of water to go under the bridge between now and when Strange actually hits the open market. The Raiders can and should do their best to make sure he never actually gets to free agency. That means making sure he’s appropriately compensated, but also in a position to be the best footballer he can.
Until the Roosters, and the Chiefs and Bears for that matter, have had their bloodlust sated, Strange will be a target. That’s not a bad thing. Rather, it reflects the Raiders have a got one of the premier five-eighths in the game, who is just 22, and ready to dominate the competition for the next ten years.
This is the curse of the Raiders, and the existential crisis that departures like Young exacerbate. Canberra must be proactive. But it helps when the talent is committed to the club. There will always be temptation to seek easier pathways to success that can be offered elsewhere.
But premierships are meant to be earned, and integrity and longevity should matter more than the completing the game on ‘easy’ mode. At the moment Strange is committed to doing it the right way. We should commend him for it.
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