{"id":765201,"date":"2026-06-28T06:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T06:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765201\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T06:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T06:14:11","slug":"nrl-news-2026-ricky-stuart-benches-savelio-tamale-mid-game-raiders-vs-dragons-round-17-result-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765201\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2026: Ricky Stuart benches Savelio Tamale mid-game, Raiders vs Dragons round 17 result, video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ricky Stuart<\/a>\u2019s brutal mid-game decision to bench young winger Savelio Tamale<\/a> after a horror start against the Dragons<\/a> paid off, with the Raiders<\/a> overcoming a half-time deficit to win 24-16 and keep their slim finals hopes alive.<\/p>\n

Tamale was peppered with high kicks in the opening 40 minutes at GIO Stadium, coming up with four errors and getting manhandled when he caught them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Savelio Tamale walks off after being benched against the Dragons.\u00a0Fox League<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old was clearly down on confidence, and it was no surprise to see the halves combination of Kyle Flanagan<\/a> and Daniel Atkinson continually target him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like the best option to score points for the Dragons this afternoon is just kick it to Tamale and see if Setu Tu can catch it,\u201d Cooper Cronk<\/a> said on Fox League.<\/p>\n

After making his fourth mistake, that\u2019s precisely what the Red V did as Atkinson placed a cross-field kick for Tu, who leapt above Tamale to score.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been under all sorts of pressure – he\u2019s in two minds every time the ball comes to him,\u201d Steve Roach added in commentary.<\/p>\n

As the visitors celebrated, Tamale was spotted walking off the field with a Raiders trainer and replaced by Seb Kris, who was on the six-man bench.<\/p>\n

It continues a difficult season for Tamale, who asked to be dropped to NSW Cup earlier in the year when he was making costly errors in the top grade.<\/p>\n

St George Illawarra took a 10-6 lead into the half-time break in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n

Tyrell Sloan opened the scoring with a runaway intercept try before State of Origin star Hudson Young<\/a> put the hosts on the board.<\/p>\n

In the second half, the Green Machine surged into the lead after Xavier Savage cleaned up a loose ball and ran 100 metres to score.<\/p>\n

Savage scored another dubious intercept try, which was awarded despite a clear touch from Simi Sasagi, before hooker Tom Starling iced the result. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ricky Stuart\u2019s brutal mid-game decision to bench young winger Savelio Tamale after a horror start against the Dragons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-765201","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\/765201","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=765201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}