NRL Round 21 - Raiders Vs Knights - 2:00pm Sunday 27th July - GIO Stadium, Canberra

HarVeeGee13 said:
Their old approach was a core of good juniors and they supplement that with experienced players from other clubs, circa 2016 they shifted to poaching young guys from other teams who were on the precipice of regular first grade, whether they were Flegg/Cup guns or guys who'd played a bit of firsts but hadn't been able to nail down a spot. On top of that there were the English guys they've nabbed too of course. Very few "local juniors" in their side right now but you can't question it as local players have simply been squeezed out by better young recruits. To sum up the recruitment approach simply: undervalued talent. The young halves prospects who can't get a game over Moses/Brown or Walker/Keary are probably pretty good, so that's who they chased. A 21 year old prop who's played a fair bit of Cup and done well, and has been 18th man in first grade a few times but hasn't cracked it yet is probably someone who can contribute for our team soon. Etc.

Good news for us is I don't think it's wildly different from where POS is shifting his approach, yes he signed Brown on massive money, but the other moves have been mostly (besides locking down our best locals) guys just below cracking grade regularly. Lachlan Crouch is the most Canberra Raidersy signing we've made probably.
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I’ll add with recruitment that every club has advantages (some bigger than others unfortunately) and they have disadvantages.

It just feels like we still haven’t worked out what our advantage is and driven that home

Let’s look at Canberra as an example as they would be most similar to us with recruitment struggles. Would you rather live in cold Canberra or Newcastle with the beautiful beaches, assuming money was equal

POS is definitely going to help with this, it’s just going to take a bit of time i feel
 
Wicket said:
I’ll add with recruitment that every club has advantages (some bigger than others unfortunately) and they have disadvantages.

It just feels like we still haven’t worked out what our advantage is and driven that home

Let’s look at Canberra as an example as they would be most similar to us with recruitment struggles. Would you rather live in cold Canberra or Newcastle with the beautiful beaches, assuming money was equal

POS is definitely going to help with this, it’s just going to take a bit of time i feel
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Canberra have a better coach with a great playing career that players would look up to.
That's the one better selling point I can see.
 
slotmachine said:
That says more about the Knights laughable recruitment than how good Mooney is.

As for the Raiders and Knights players they pick up the ones we tell to pack their bags, they haven't stolen one we wanted to keep since Tapine 10 years ago.
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It really does make you wonder how we don't seem to be able to identify potential talent, it's a massive issue.
 
As far as Canberra v Knights coaching etc
Not every top player becomes a top Coach actually few do,
Ricky S seems to have found the way, gets the team to play as a unit, man for man, same goals and belief.
If I am being honest I never thought of Stuart as a absolute top player, good but a few ahead of him, can name a few above him but can’t think of a coach that played half back any better.
He gets the best from his team and Canberra as a whole have created something special with the Viking Horn and Clap that makes it a daunting task to visit, especially mid freezing winter.
Knights have been very ordinary with a few great Coaches but haven’t found that theme, that solidarity that even when playing ordinary teams don’t like visiting.
Can’t quite put my finger on it but something isn’t quite right, hopefully we are building to it be that Obi or a new man but whoever is in for a tough 2-3 years
 
Frank McWilliams said:
As far as Canberra v Knights coaching etc
Not every top player becomes a top Coach actually few do,
Ricky S seems to have found the way, gets the team to play as a unit, man for man, same goals and belief.
If I am being honest I never thought of Stuart as a absolute top player, good but a few ahead of him, can name a few above him but can’t think of a coach that played half back any better.
He gets the best from his team and Canberra as a whole have created something special with the Viking Horn and Clap that makes it a daunting task to visit, especially mid freezing winter.
Knights have been very ordinary with a few great Coaches but haven’t found that theme, that solidarity that even when playing ordinary teams don’t like visiting.
Can’t quite put my finger on it but something isn’t quite right, hopefully we are building to it be that Obi or a new man but whoever is in for a tough 2-3 years
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Really, I always thought of Ricky as probably the top halfback for most of the time he was playing, until maybe his last 1 or 2 years. Was telling that Langer started a few Ashes tours as starting 7, but by the end of both tours Stuart had taken his spot in the team.

If they had 40-20s back then, I reckon Ricky would probably have set a career tally that would never have been beaten. Absolute gun kicking game.
 
Wasn’t talking about Ricky as top in his time but more in line with other 7’s such as Johns, Langer, Mortimer, etc but he was very good, I liked him as a player, but not quite top 5 great 7 wasn’t downgrading but of those 7’s likely rated above him he has been the better coach
 
I think Ricky was a very decent 7 who worked really hard to improve himself and I think that's what he seems to instill in his players, work hard on the basics and play for each other. Something the Knights had once upon a time.
 
jamesgould said:
Why’s that?
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Lacks class! Cogger and Hastings (aren’t amazing) performed to a good enough level where we should have beaten warriors! Gamble isn’t better then Hastings or Cogger so why change some thing that is going ok? Gamble is prob better than Hastings at a few positions be it hooker or Lock! Hastings is a half. Gamble kicked it backwards…….
 
slotmachine said:
That says more about the Knights laughable recruitment than how good Mooney is.

As for the Raiders and Knights players they pick up the ones we tell to pack their bags, they haven't stolen one we wanted to keep since Tapine 10 years ago.
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Tapine was told to leave after assaulting some one
 
Yep and the club was crowing about what a recruitment win it was at the time because we replaced him with Barnett who for a few years was better.

Tapine surpassed him by about mid 2019. But then Barnett went on to become a top ten prop himself! At the Warriors…
 
To be fair to the knights they were sort of right?
The 500k a year the Raiders paid for Tapine was pretty much equivalent to a million under the current cap. And they got an average edge forward for the duration (like, not as good as KPP is now).
I'd argue it wasn't until the next contract from 2020 and the six again era that he looked like living up to that deal.
 
Joey1245 said:
Lacks class! Cogger and Hastings (aren’t amazing) performed to a good enough level where we should have beaten warriors! Gamble isn’t better then Hastings or Cogger so why change some thing that is going ok? Gamble is prob better than Hastings at a few positions be it hooker or Lock! Hastings is a half. Gamble kicked it backwards…….
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Fair enough. I don't agree, but he definitely had a bit of a shocker on the weekend. Although I do think he helped quite a bit with the attacking shape, which looked great in the first half. A lot of rust there after barely playing for the last two years ... but if you look back at 2023 I'd say he was quite integral to our great run at the end of the season.
 
Don’t know the tackle count but Gamble looked to being involved, especially chasing back, seemed to make a few tackles, his attack was down and some of his kicks weren’t so good but he received a few poor passes on last tackle.
 
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