A dejected, frustrated Ricky Stuart was scathing in his summary of Canberra’s performance against the Roosters on Thursday night, and lamented a season of missed opportunities and player exits.
The Raiders’ hopes for finals footy all but ended in Mackay after a 40-16 shellacking to an injury-hit Roosters side.
With his arms-crossed, Stuart struggled to find words to express his disappointment in a brief press conference.
“It’s an empty feeling,” he said.
“It’s a shocking feeling, because I think we’re a better team than where we’ve ended up on the table. But we are where we are. It’s all because of the middle part of the season where we had a real bad slump. We lost all our mojo and form.
“I think we were two from 12, and realistically we probably don’t even deserve to be fighting for the eight tonight. We were poor tonight. We were really poor.”
Against a severely depleted Roosters team, the Raiders were disjointed, error-prone and far from the electric form that saw them reach a grand final just a few seasons ago. Stuart was simply stunned how soundly Canberra were beaten.
“I’m not being disrespectful to the Roosters – they’ve had a tough year and done a really good job getting where they are – but if we can’t beat that team out there tonight, we’re only wasting another week being up here instead of going to see the families,” Stuart said.
“Because I mean, f–k it. We couldn’t beat that team… Christ, we’re waiting for another week to get beaten.”
Stuart said the side were ready and raring to go pre-game, and that he was completely blindsided by what they dished up, blaming mistakes and a lacklustre approach to attack for their defeat.
“There’s games like that where you don’t see that coming. The boys prepared well. I can’t blame our defence tonight. Our attack was dreadful,” he said.
“At critical parts of the game, in stages where it could have put us in a better situation. The second half we took so many wrong options in attack. We didn’t give ourselves a chance to attack because we took the wrong options with the football.”
In reflecting on the rollercoaster Raiders’ season that saw a non-stop reports of team disharmony, including a messy exit of former halfback import George Williams, Stuart was curt.
Before the end of the press conference, when asked whether Williams’ departure mid-season had a significant impact, Stuart simply replied: “Yep. Very much so.”
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