defeating Parramatta 40-16<\/a> in front of a big crowd at a fast and dry GIO Stadium on Saturday.<\/p>\nBut it wasn\u2019t as comfortable as the final score suggests as only a strong finish was what got the hosts over the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think we\u2019re at a certain level as a football team at the moment \u2026 we\u2019re not going to have success going into the back end of the season,\u201d Stuart said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a team we want to become, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re chasing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Eels were fearless in the first half, with aggressive running and slick ball movement stunning the Green Machine.<\/p>\n
In the end though it was the home side who got stuck into a grind, wearing Parramatta down until breaking through and running riot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI walk around there (change rooms) sometimes and I see four, five or six 22-year-olds, 23-year-olds, all gathering around talking about how they\u2019re going to get into the game and what they\u2019re going to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look at Ethan Strange at the moment. His communication and confidence has grown so much over 12 months, and I just keep thinking to myself, where are you going to be in another two years?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to keep coming back to thinking realistically that we\u2019re still developing these young blokes.\u201d<\/p>\n
His young winger and son Jed was prolific with two tries and three assists.<\/p>\n
But his work was guided by the Raiders\u2019 senior members, with Jamal Fogarty inspiring yet again in the halves and Joseph Tapine (165m) leading from the front.<\/p>\n
The Eels were without their $13 million senior player Dylan Brown after coach Jason Ryles dropped him for Joash Papalii.<\/p>\n
Papalii, the 21-year-old young gun, set up a Sean Russell try but was unable to inspire a tired second-half outfit.<\/p>\n
Second-rower Matt Doorey (165 metres) and Zac Lomax (one try, 228m) were also influential for Parramatta.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we did really well to turn the momentum around and then swing it to our favour in that first half,\u201d said Ryles, whose side have only won five of 17 games this season and sit at the wrong end of the table.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Papalii\u2019s) obviously got some lessons there in the second half. So we\u2019ll just keep working really hard on developing his game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canberra may be tracking towards their first minor premiership in 35 years but coach Ricky Stuart knows they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,4532,761,762,158,9112,85],"class_list":["post-7265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canberra-raiders","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-parramatta-eels","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7265","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=7265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}