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It looks like at least one more star (or at a minimum, up-and-comer) wants out of the Canberra Raiders, with recent news that Anthony Milford is wanting to return to Queensland next season.
Throw in Blake Ferguson’s reported and rumoured desire to play with a Sydney club in 2014, add Todd Carney’s inglorious departure in 2008 and consider Josh Dugan’s sacking earlier this season and it seems a pattern has formed.
All of these players’ circumstances were different. Some of them actively sought to leave the club, while others forced the clubs’ hand.
Two of them haven’t even materialised (the Milford and Ferguson cases) although it seems a given that at least one of them will elsewhere after this season finishes up.
CEO Don Furner has expressed his frustration at the current dilemma and pointed to Dugan’s and Carney’s departures as examples of players who have left the club and flourished elsewhere.
Dugan and Carney were both local juniors identified by the Raiders at a young age.
Milford is a Queenslander but was similarly spotted at a young age and the Raiders would have invested a lot of time, money and effort into developing into an NRL-standard player and quite possibly a star of the future.
Ferguson came to the club because he said he wants to win a premiership and he saw the Raiders as an ideal fit for his ambitions.
All four have brought plenty to club be it in on-field performance of marketability (leaving aside any off-field dramas for now) but have left before reaching their prime. Don Furner, not to mention the club’s supporters, has every right to be frustrated.
This is particularly so with the cases of Dugan and Carney. Both were axed by the club which acted in the best interests of the game by terminating their contracts, as their off-field behaviour was a black eye for rugby league.
Having left, they both after varying degrees of purgatory (thoroughly deserved and probably not long enough in Dugan’s case) ended up at others, where they have flourished to the point of earning representative honours for New South Wales.
Carney also won a Dally M medal and played in a grand final for the Roosters.
Ferguson has already played for New South Wales but has not yet reached his peak. Milford has had only a taste of NRL action but looks a star of the future. And now both of them could leave.
Is it fair to the Raiders, who have put so much into these players (particularly Milford)? No.
Was it fair to the Raiders that Dugan and Carney were sacked by the club doing its bit to help the image of the game, only for those players to go from strength to strength at other club? Definitely not.
I’m going to throw something out there. Despite the differing circumstances involving these four players, the undeniable common thread is that they all left their contracts early. Could it be that they just don’t like Canberra?
To set the record straight, I’m not a Canberran and have never lived there.
I have visited our nation’s capital a number of times and I have no problem with it – in fact I quite like it. I could see myself living there in the future and enjoying it.
However it tends to get a bad rap from a lot of friends and colleagues of mine who either live there or have lived there, for a number of reasons.
“Too small”. “Too cold”. “Too far from the beach”. “Isolated”. “Average nightlife scene”. “Not enough entertainment options”. “Expensive place to live”. “Not much corporate opportunity”. “No other sport on”.
I’m just postulating here, but these might be big issues for young, fit, professional rugby league players between the ages of 18 and 24 who might well want to live in a place where these issues don’t exist.
It’s simplistic to say that such issues are all that affected Dugan, Carney, Ferguson or Milford in their situations, but they can nonetheless be relevant.
Could one of these reasons, and the associated frustration, be part of why four such highly talented players who owe (or owed) the Canberra Raiders club so much have found their way out of town?
At least in Carney’s and Dugan’s cases, their behaviour was so destructive that they would have known it would likely damage their career with the club if they persisted with it, which obviously wasn’t enough of a deterrent to them.
Ferguson apparently wants to leave to be closer to his uncle Anthony Mundine in Sydney, while Milford is seeking to leave on compassionate grounds owing to his sick father in Brisbane.
For the latter two I’m not necessarily saying whether it’s right or wrong for them to want to leave in their circumstances or whether the club ought to hold them to their contracts – nor am I attempting to answer why this could be a problem with hundreds of other professional footy players evidently haven’t had the same problem – I’m just throwing a possibility out there.
As I mentioned earlier, I quite like Canberra myself.
But a number of residents and former residents whom I’ve spoken to have often disparaged the place and while I would hate to think their reasons ring true, could could they…and it could it be a reason why a number of stars of the game have sought a way out of there?
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