{"id":36465,"date":"2025-08-01T03:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/36465\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T03:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:05:09","slug":"nrl-ricky-stuart-laughs-off-canberra-raiders-slow-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/36465\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL: Ricky Stuart laughs off Canberra Raiders’ slow starts"},"content":{"rendered":"

An amused Ricky Stuart is at a loss to explain Canberra’s recent Jekyll-and-Hyde NRL<\/a> performances as the Raiders prepare for wet and wild conditions against St George Illawarra.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

1 Related<\/p>\n

Since their round-19 bye, the ladder-leading Raiders have made a habit of going tit for tat before the break, only to blow their opponents away in the second half.<\/p>\n

Canberra have won the second half of their past two games by a combined total of 54-0, but lost the first halves of those clashes against Parramatta and Newcastle by 34-30.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” said a laughing Stuart when asked to explain the dramatic second-half turnarounds.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got to take what it is. There’s times there when we have got to good leads and been run down, and then we’ve run down leads. We’re certainly very versatile.”<\/p>\n

Raiders coach Ricky Stuart.\u00a0Photo by Mark Nolan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Famously one of the NRL’s most passionate figures, Stuart was hopeful for less of an emotional rollercoaster in Wollongong on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

“But it’s not going to be,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You look at last night’s game (Melbourne’s tight win over 15th-placed Parramatta). Everyone thinks certain teams are just going to roll through other teams. It’s not the case.<\/p>\n

“There’s teams performing out there that are still playing for pride.”<\/p>\n

The Raiders are aiming for only the fourth 10-game winning streak in their 44-year history against the 12th-placed Dragons.<\/p>\n

South-easterly winds of up to 35km\/h and a 95 per cent chance of rain have been predicted at the Dragons’ coastal home ground in Wollongong.<\/p>\n

“There’s going to be one very, very difficult half of football if it’s actually occurs the way it’s predicted,” Stuart said.<\/p>\n

“Kicking game is important but against those types of winds, there’s a lot more comes into it. You’ve got to have a pretty healthy set of six in regards to getting your team into position to get to a kick.”<\/p>\n

The Raiders have centre Seb Kris back from concussion and could welcome second-rower Matty Nicholson in for next week’s clash with Manly.<\/p>\n

Stuart has been impressed by the Englishman’s progress after an ankle injury interrupted a great first season in the NRL.<\/p>\n

“I was only just talking to him this morning, I was giving him a compliment in regards to how well he was looking out there running yesterday,” Stuart said.<\/p>\n

Nicholson’s recovery would create a selection dilemma given Simi Sasagi and Zac Hosking’s excellent form in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

“You don’t like having to tell players that they’re not in the 17 but it’s my job to pick the best team for that weekend,” Stuart said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An amused Ricky Stuart is at a loss to explain Canberra’s recent Jekyll-and-Hyde NRL performances as the Raiders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-36465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}