Will the Green Machine show up in 2018?

As a keen Raiders fan I watch all their games closely. First a few comments about Ricky Stuart. It is asserted by some that he plays favourites well anyone who manages people does to some extent. Employees or players in this case also have a responsibility to try to work with a coach — it is called managing upwards. Some players don’t work as well as others with particular coaches and this will always be the case. It is not always the fault of the coach. As for Jack Wighton he cops a lot of criticism but some of it is a tad unfair. He does make mistakes but so do all fullbacks sure he makes more than many others. Maybe he is better suited at centre but I will say this he does set up quite a few tries for the Raiders with his passing game and he is a very strong ball runner. I think that Ricky backs Jack publicly so strongly to try to build his confidence to let him know that he does not care what others say — he rates him. To me the issue that Raiders face is not their backs but their forwards. The Raiders conceded a lot of relatively soft tries in the middle last year due to a lack of mobility. They did better when they moved Whitehead to lock but at times they really get caught around the ruck. If they do not improve here they may miss the 8. I think that they will do well this year but they really need to tighten their defence in the middle. It is very hard to win games when you are conceding soft tries.

I am not a Parra supporter though what the man did there was despicable. I am certain that he knew about the cheating and rather face upto it and blow the whistle he dumped them and ran to the Raiders. A cowardly act if ever there was one. Stuart is a terrible coach. I don't know what he is like as a person but that is not what we are talking about here. If being a nice person won premierships then the Raiders should recruit Mary Poppins and have done with it. Fact is that Stuart is a third rate coach, I said so when the Raiders first recruited him and my heart goes out to the long suffering Raiders fans today. There is a simple fact, the Green Machine will achieve nothing while stuart is in charge. Luck or no luck, win in the last few minutes or not , it doesn't matter - the raiders won't make the eight and are more likely to via for the spoon as anything else.

As I have repeated on this site continually, Ricky Stuart is no doubt a good bloke. You just have to see and hear what his ex-players & team mates think of him to confirm this. RIcky and Bellamy are very good mates, Mal Meninga is in 2018 helping 'coach' the Raiders for Ricky. Ricky is very passionate & no doubt his daughters condition is trying for him and his family. His foundation does good things for the Canberra community. But at the end of the day he is employed to Coach the Raiders. Ricky's biggest fault is that he plays favourites. In 2015 there were two emerging back rowers, Luke Bateman & Mitch Barnett. Towards the end of the 2015 season they were getting similar game time in the first grade side. It was obvious that Barnett was the better all round player of the two. This was confirmed by Barnett being named the Metropolitan Cup player of the year (2015). This didn't sway Ricky, he favoured Bateman. So much so that he allowed Barnett an early release to the Knights where he is one of their best players. Bateman has plodded along & is a fringe NRL player at best. All things being equal with hindsight who would you have kept Ricky? Jack Wighton, is no doubt a really good bloke who trains hard & tries even harder. Ricky openly states that Jack is his favourite. That's fine, but Jack is not a fullback. In 2017 he was the most error prone fullback in the NRL, the next worst was half of Jack's numbers. Opposition teams target Jack, because he consistently makes errors. His effort is always there but he just can't do it. He is a centre at best, he can't be moved to the wing because of the same reason he is not a fullback. Despite the glaring statistics highlighting his shortcomings Ricky recently re signed Jack until the end of 2020. If Jacks contract is performance based he will be on the minimum NRL wage, but I think the 'favourite' would be on over 400k per season. Why have the Raiders got salary cap issues? Nick Cotric, is a fullback, he has previously played there, but will Ricky give his a go there in 2018? (Not if Jack is fit to play) Kurt Baptise is a very good NRL player, he always made a difference whenever he came onto the field, in the few games where he started he was even better. Blind Freddy could see his potential. To develop this potential one would imagine that you would give him more game time. Not Ricky, in 2017 there were games where Baptise didn't get a run at all. Other matches he got less than 5 minutes. From memory the Raiders lost all of those games. The Raiders were under salary cap pressure so who do they let go? Baptise. Who I can only assume went to the Super League because no other NRL team could afford him under their cap. Another obviously talented player, who was not a 'favourite' lost from the Raiders. Why Ricky, why? (We currently 1/1/2018 don't have a hooker due to Hodgson's injury) 2017 started with so much hope. Then the Knights played them in a trial game at Queanbeyan. 44-0 flogging by the Knights. CROKER, LEILUA & RAPANA didn't play. Hodgson was the captain. Did Mitch Barnett make that much of a diffence to the Knights? Then Ricky tells us that the other NRL teams have worked out the Raiders of 2016. So in 2017 the Raiders have to learn to win tough. Learn to defend like every other good NRL team. Not only does Ricky play favourites, he can predict the future. So the season starts with a flogging by the Knights who's playing roster for 2017 is well below the rest of the NRL clubs. The focus on defence 44-0 loss didn't seem to be working, so what do the Raiders do? They play the entire year playing like every other NRL team tries to do. It's just that we aren't as good at playing boring defensive Rugby League. The reason for that is that we are way better than any other NRL team at playing attacking Rugby League where you score more points than your opponent & WIN more games than you loose. You are totally unpredictable & therefore are difficult to defend against. Therefore you have a point of difference. You play an exciting game which the fans love. Even if at times this style of League doesn't work we love the fact that with 10 minutes to go 18 points down we may just win. But the most telling game of 2017 was the Panthers win at Bathurst. Why did that happen? Ricky stuffed it up. He took Papauli off the field with 10 minutes to go & had him and Soliola sitting on the bench when Moylan ran riot. Did Ricky acknowledge this error? No. So Ricky, I'm just a Raiders fan from Taree who loved every minute of the 2016 season, my wife & I would watch every game as we do every year, but in 2016 something changed. We started to win games, in fact win more games than we lost. As the season went, we started to expect to win, regardless of the result it was great just taking the game in. In 2017 something changed. We lost many more games that we won, we were back to what were used to bet, only it was heartbreaking, because we knew that the exact same team had been such fun just 12 months earlier. So in 2018, Ricky can we play Newcastle in a trial game. They are much better this year. You prepare the team however you want. But if you get flogged 44-0 playing a defence based game with your error prone favourite fullback & team without a hooker. How about you go back to an attack based mindset. Who knows, maybe it just may work.

Hasler coached Manly to title wins and Grand finals and then coached the Dogs to GF's . I thought the Dogs should have moved him on and expressed my view on a forum. Instead they signed him for another couple of years and said he was like a blue chip share and a proven performer. I believe Stuart is in a similar position to Hasler in his last year at the Dogs. If they are pretty much out of contention again early in the season you have a possible situation where the players lose faith in the coaches ability , rightly or wrongly. It is not a personal attack on coaches but a valid view from an armchair critic.

Peter Phelps - more than their fair share of luck eh? They seemed to be officiated much more fairly - the Raiders got some 50/50 calls and I recall saying many times that it was amazing. IF you're a Parra supporter, I do wonder why you guys just don't smile that he's not with you anymore, rather than hate on the man. I live in Canberra and have an autistic child, like Ricky. It sure helps to have family support, and some from the Community. My 30 year old son had a very aggressive brain tumour when he was 5 and he's brain damaged and autistic. As my son can only stay out for 2 hours, I asked Summernats if he could get a free ticket to Saturday, which is the most exciting day - they said NO. My son had just been diagnosed with a second cancer too - makes you feel pretty sick. Ricky took an opportunity to return to where his family can help, as autistic kids are a bit of a task, to say the least. In regard to being well in front before the final few minutes, it sure helps if the opposition aren't laying all over you; aren't standing offside all night; good passes don't get called forward; you can attract TPA's so you have a better class of cattle; very obvious penalties are given etc etc. I don't think you understand.

Ricky is one stubborn bugger and I wish his haters would bugger off as he just gets more stubborn the more he's criticized. He has done a great deal to have a team that is at least competitive. He deserves great credit for this, and for the substantial amount of charity work he does.

Of course it comes down to inches and the last few minutes of a game is where it is usually won. The Cowboys in 2015 scored on the siren to level and Cronulla in 2016 only just held on to win. How many finals games come down to the last few minutes or a few inches? We had seven close finals games out of nine this year alone.

Tough. You do know you are in a site that is really about the community and its opinions.

Teams that get to and win Grand Finals don't rely on winning games in the last few minutes or because of a few inches. The teams that win Grand Finals are well in front long before the final hooter. They don't trust to luck. I was say that the Raiders out performed in 2016 when they had more than their fair share of luck and returned to the norm last year. The Raiders won't make the top 4, they simply are not good enough.

In 2016 The Raiders were a few minutes away from the Grand Final & the way they were playing as a team, they could have won it. Due to the results from the said season and the players they had on paper for the new season, many were convinced that 2017 was going to be the year of The Raiders. As we all saw, that's not the way it turned out to be. So now, many of the same people are predicting The Raiders are in for a slow death over the course of the 2018 season which will finish off by Ricky Stuart being sacked. I'm going to stick my neck out for 2018 & suggest that The Raiders will be close to being a top 4 team. If 2017 was the opposite of 2016 for The Raiders, then 2018 will turn out to be the opposite of their 2017 season. The games they lost in the last few minutes in 2017 will turn out to be the same games they will win in 2018. Sometimes it boils down to inches or even seconds in a game. For their fans & the competition, I hope I'm right.

A history lesson for the raiders and no mention of the salary cap breaches that enabled such a strong team (and no meaningful penalty) in the late 80's.Pretending they are related to the Minnesota Vikings and Iceland with that pre-game Viking clap when it originated in Motherwell FC and the term raiders was coined because the Canberra were going to raid Sydney clubs is marketing for 5 year olds.

You no doubt are correct about many critics. If they were all that bad I wouldn't bother being on this forum and I would say many posters are fair minded and intelligent. You are describing a majority of posters on a couple of supporters forums I have a look at from time to time. I have no regrets in taking on this pack of barbarians on my teams forum a while back. Your description above is a very mild depiction of them. One thing I did notice though that is that the fair minded ones usually had played league at a reasonable level and did have some insight into the realities of Rugby league

You don't need to be a top coach or a Dally M winner to see what is plainly obvious. That is why we still have elections for the highest offices in the land. The wisdom of the masses has been proven time and again over that of so called experts.

I agree with Paul, its not the Raiders that are the problem it is Ricky. He has proved time and again that he is useless as a coach often exploiting the skills and talents of others and passing them off as his own. The Raiders are well over the honeymoon period with Ricky so sadly they will continue to underperform until they get rid of him.

Ron, I don't hate Stuart, I just think he's overrated as a coach and he does himself and his Club no favours by going off at referees when his sides lose games. My mob "pinched" Paul Vaughan, who was doing nothing at the Raiders and he was dead unlucky not to play SOO. That's where Stuart is not a good coach and guys like Bellamy and Wayne Bennett are.

It never ceases to amaze me how the twittering masses all have an opinion on other people. Coaches, celebrities, politicians. You name them. In my experience these critics have no ability, no talent and no understanding of reality. And in almost all cases have never achieved anything so they try to tear other successful people down to their loser level.

Its Stuart they hate....

Need a culture change. By that I mean they need to place as much importance in winning in the first half of the season as they do in the second half. For a few years now the Raiders have considered their season a success if they scrap into the finals with a late surge of wins only to be bundled out quick when they meet serious teams. It is the same mind set that they have about winning games in the final minutes.The players think its OK to leak points if they win in the last minute. With this mindset the Raiders will always be in the middle of the ladder. Ricky and the Raiders have to ask themselves "What would the Storm do."

Why the hell are there so many Raiders and Ricky Stuart haters on this site? Supporters of most other NRL clubs should be Raiders' fans because over the years their clubs have pinched players that have been developed by the Raiders and gone on to star for those clubs.

I don't think the Raiders are well coached. They don't seem to be working to much of a plan, rather relying on individual brilliance. Problem is they are full of inconsistent individuals, many of whom despite being long term first graders are still prone to occasional (or more) brain farts in games. I tend to characterise them as being a very skilled team but really seriously lacking in footy smarts.