Canberra coach Ricky Stuart has vowed to remain patient with his team after watching another two NRL points slip from their grasp on Sunday.
This time scores were locked with 10 minutes to go against ladder leaders St George Illawarra in Mudgee when they had the ball in front of the opposition goal posts.
However instead of deciding to edge in front with a field goal – and soak up time with winger Jordan Rapana in the sin bin – the Raiders went for a left-edge attacking raid and came up empty.
One minute later Dragons fullback Matt Dufty burned four defenders in a 50-metre try, before skipper Gareth Widdop sealed the win with a late field goal.
Stuart was seething about his team’s late-game fade-outs after the match.
“It was 18-all there with a player off and we had a play-the-ball on tackle five in front of the goalposts. We should kick the field goal and we should’ve went a point up and we get our man back,” he said.
“We’ve got to start playing smart about our football, and we’re not.”
Stuart avoided apportioning blame on the Raiders halves, instead declaring five-eighth Blake Austin had his best defensive performance for the club since his arrival in 2015.
He said it was on the entire team to be more selective with the decision-making in the clutch.
“Yes the halves, the nines, have got a very important role in that, but they’ve got people around them that are smart enough to know that they should be combined with those types of decisions,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of mentioning something in regards to a strategy or a play. We talk about closing out games a lot. We’re losing games because we’re not closing them out well enough at the moment.”
Their latest failure now means five of their seven losses have been by seven points or less.
Last year the Raiders lost eight of 10 games decided by six points or less, and the year before that they lost five of eight games by the same spread.
“We’ve put ourselves in so many positions this season so far to win games and we haven’t,” Stuart said.
“That is frustrating like it was last week. Sitting here, I sound like a broken record every week. We work on it, talk about it, but we’re not doing it.”
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