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Ricky Stuart has bemoaned his side’s poor handling as Canberra’s poor execution led to a defeat to Melbourne Storm in Wagga Wagga.
The Raiders matched the Storm in many areas, but consistently failed to make the most of their own opportunities and committed 14 errors en route to a 30-16 defeat.
“It’s a frustrating time for us at the moment because we’re just not putting any team under any pressure,” said the Raiders coach.
“I feel for the boys because I see how close we are and as I just said to them, you’re allowed to enjoy your football.
“But they’re not enjoying their football at the moment because you’re not putting teams under pressure … until we do, we’re not going to enjoy our football.
“At times it’s execution, other times it’s bad luck … we’re not going to grow and develop into the team we should be.”
Jahrome Hughes was at the root of all that was good for the Storm, who piled on the points before the break, scoring three unanswered tries in a period in which they starved the Raiders of the ball and reaped the benefits.
Despite their strong first half performance, Craig Bellamy was seen reading the riot act to his men in the sheds and later said it was a move to keep standards high.
“I just wanted to make a couple of strong points, I thought when we got to a good lead we started looking for the easy options instead of sticking to what worked,” said the Storm coach.
“We’re really happy to come away with the points here … I was probably a little bit disappointed in the second half, which I imagine Ricky would be the same.
“There just seemed to be a lot of mistakes in the second half and the game was slow as.”
Canberra were able to respond and make the second half a contest, but the Storm kept them at arm’s length, with Hughes scoring again late to seal the deal.
While Stuart was correct to bemoan the errors that held his team back, it was hard to shake the feeling that Melbourne always had more gears if they had needed them.
The Raiders benefitted from an early penalty goal from Brad Schneider, but the run of play was not in their favour. Melbourne did what they do best, adding pressure on pressure, and after Nelson Asofa-Solomona had gone within inches, Harry Grant was able to power himself over.
Canberra barely touched the ball between Grant’s try and the next. The Storm kept the boot on the throat and while the Raiders defended manfully, they had no answer to the purple waves. Jahrome Hughes was there when the dam broke.
Things were starting to get out of hand. From the tenth minute onwards, Melbourne had enjoyed 84% of possession and 67% of territory. Canberra’s tackling began to fall off, with Tom Starling missing Cameron Munster, who found – who else? – Ryan Papenhuyzen to get on the board.
The Raiders needed a big play to swing the momentum and they got one. Brad Schneider rode a tackle from Munster and identified an overlap, with the ball flying through several sets of hands en route to Semi Valemei, who still had plenty to do to score.
Papenhuyzen was the man who got himself in the way and copped some friendly fire that sent him off for a HIA.
Suddenly flush with confidence, Canberra had the Storm on the rack. They might have scored through Matt Timoko and had the defence backpedalling on several occasions, but were never able to capitalise.
Early in the second half, Justin Olam extended the lead after crashing through several defenders, but Canberra were far from out of it.
Time and again they spread the ball wide early and asked difficult questions of the Storm, but as has been the case in recent weeks, the handling was not up to the required standard to make impacts against good defences.
Melbourne were far from their best too, with discipline an ongoing problem, but the Raiders were consistently incapable of making them pay.
Charze Nicoll-Klokstad had been the worst culprit in failing to make the last pass count, but finally managed to get the Raiders back within touching distance after putting Nick Cotric over.
It was as if it flipped a switch in the Storm: they’d offered little in attack since Olam’s try, but immediately went up the other end and struck back via Jahrome Hughes.
The Raiders had time to take a confusing penalty goal with time expired, but that was all she wrote.