{"id":794517,"date":"2026-07-12T00:52:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T00:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/794517\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T00:52:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T00:52:34","slug":"nrl-news-2026-canberra-raiders-coach-ricky-stuarts-those-dicks-dont-know-jab-at-critics-comments-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/794517\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2026: Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart\u2019s \u2018those dicks don\u2019t know\u2019 jab at critics, comments, reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raiders<\/a> coach Ricky Stuart<\/a> has taken a pointed jab at critics of his comments the club only needed key players to return for them to become the side that won last year\u2019s minor premiership.<\/p>\n

The Raiders put in arguably their best performance of the season against the Bulldogs<\/a> on Saturday evening, running out 40-16 winners<\/a> at Accor Stadium.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Raiders coach Ricky Stuart.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n

Ethan Sanders was brilliant with the boot, kicking eight from nine, including three penalty goals.<\/p>\n

The Raiders were boosted by the return of veteran Josh Papali\u2019i<\/a> and rookie Noah Martin, the latter managing to play all 80 minutes despite having had surgery on both ankles after suffering a nasty syndesmosis injury in April.<\/p>\n

Both Papali\u2019i and Martin were brilliant, which allowed Sanders to get the ball in better positions to be able to once again show what he was capable of.<\/p>\n

Stuart compared Sanders\u2019 plight to that of Nathan Cleary<\/a>\u2019s in the opening two State of Origin<\/a> matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve all been critical of Nathan Cleary and his game in Origin,\u201d Stuart began.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I spoke on radio in Canberra last week before Origin, and before this game, that Ethan Sanders has been criticised and targeted, and I don\u2019t reckon the New South Wales<\/a> Origin middles had delivered for Nathan, and they did the other night.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019ve got some middles back and our middles delivered tonight and all of a sudden \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what half you\u2019ve got. If you aren\u2019t getting some go-forward or some dominance in the middle, it\u2019s hard kicking on the back foot, it\u2019s hard playing on the back foot, and that\u2019s what Sanders had to endure or handle over the last number of months.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve seen the class of Nathan Cleary on Wednesday night, but it comes on the back of your forwards doing their job and giving you a platform to play off, and then for a player like Nathan and player like Ethan, who\u2019s just learning, obviously it makes it a lot easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart was then asked if the win was a personal reward for not hooking Sanders.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need to be rewarded,\u201d he said. \u201cI know what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart was asked about Martin, and the veteran coach admitted he was surprised he\u2019d managed to play all 80 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, publicly it\u2019s very hard for me to sit here when we\u2019re getting beaten and telling you what I think I know because you\u2019re only gonna get bashed up socially and bashed up publicly, but those dicks don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I just won\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Noah Martin\u2019s played how many games? We\u2019ve missed him. I said we\u2019ve missed him. It showed tonight how much we missed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t wait to get him back because I know what we\u2019ve missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuart\u2019s Raiders are still two wins out of the eight, but are at home for four of their last seven matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raiders coach Ricky Stuart has taken a pointed jab at critics of his comments the club only needed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-794517","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\/794517","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=794517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}