Ricky Stuart is probably feeling pretty proud of himself right now. For the first season since he took over as Raiders head coach they aren’t one of the favourites for the spoon.

That must be a big achievement for the big fella.

It is no secret the Raiders have had some lean years since making the eight in 2012.

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After the loss of Josh Dugan and Blake Ferguson, and the plummeting form of David Shillington, Tom Learoyd-Lahrs and Terry Campese, the Raiders have had to wait a few years to rebuild their side.

But I think they have finally done it.

They were one of the big surprise packets in 2015, coming 10th when a lot of punters expected them to finish 16th. But with some of the best purchases of last year like Blake Austin, Iosia Soliola and Josh Hodgson, they should have finished in the top eight.

Yet their defence cost them. They lost eight games by eight points or less last year and a lot of that was due to their very lacklustre defence.

But now they are coming into the 2016 season and once again they have strengthened their impressive roster. They have gained Aidan Sezer, Elliot Whitehead, Jeff Lima and Joe Tapine (looks like I don’t need to eat that shoelace) and lost Shillington, Mitch Cornish and Josh McCrone, making the side once again a lot stronger.

However, this roster will mean nothing if the team can’t sort out its defensive issues. So will the Raiders be able to improve with this better roster?



Can Stuart lead Canberra into the finals, making it the first team he has improved in his coaching career? Or will this be another failure for Ricky?

1. Jack Wighton

2. Edrick Lee

3. Jarrod Croker

4. Joseph Leilua

5. Sisa Waqa

6. Blake Austin

7. Aidan Sezer

8. Paul Vaughan

9. Josh Hodgson

10. Frank-Paul Nu’uausala

11. Josh Papalii

12. Elliott Whitehead

13. Shaun Fensom

14. Shannon Boyd

15. Sia Soliola

16. Joseph Tapine

17. Jeff Lima

Strengths

Blake Austin is a cold-blooded, killer Viking on the field – at least he looks like one anyway. Coming into 2015 people thought Austin was a talented player with the ball in-hand, but no one could have predicted his rise.

He won a very well-deserved Dally M for five-eighth of the year, and despite having only one proper year in first grade, people are demanding he is in the No.6 jersey for New South Wales this year.

Austin is a running half with the size of a second rower, the speed of a centre and the footwork of some of the best in the business. He made defences look silly last year, and I can only see him getting better and better as his game becomes more and more refined.

Now we get to Aidan Sezer, who will not only be a perfect partner for Austin but is one of the most underrated players in the game. He has had a few injury concerns in his time, however his kicking game is sublime and he is a very talented organiser.

Since Austin is lacking in both these departments, those two will form a very strong combination. Heck, they are one of the stronger on paper halves combinations in the league.

Josh Hodgson was another ‘buy of the year’ candidate last year. When he came to the club he looked like just an unremarkable dummy half, but in the regular season he adapted to the NRL incredibly well and soon become one of the game’s better hookers.



Hodgson’s kicking game from dummy half was incredible, and he led the game for the most 40/20s of 2015. His attacking instincts are superb, he just knows what to do from dummy half to in order to score points. I will never forget that game-winning try he scored against Parramatta in Round 26 last year, he just read the defence perfectly and played them for fools.

Last year he was still adjusting to the NRL and needed to swap with a bench dummy half. However, at the back end of the year he had started playing 80 minutes, and given his form in the trials he needs to keep this up – because the Raiders lost something whenever he was off the field.

The centre pairing has a lot of talent in it. Jarrod Croker is on track to be one of, if not the highest point-scorer of all time. He has scored 1128 points thus far in his career and the scary thing is, he is only 25. He may be very sketchy defensively, however his offence is very potent.

Croker is fast, strong and one of the few centres in the game that has a good kicking and playmaking game. And for a team that relies so heavily on their attack, that is invaluable.

Then there is Joey Leilua who is also knowns as BJ. Leilua is someone that I think a lot of people judge too harshly. People need to remember that this guy was good enough to be picked in a grand final side at the age of 19. He has immense talent, unfortunately he seldom uses it and has weight problems.

However, this year those weight issues look to be gone. I have never seen BJ look this fit. Not only that but his form was pretty good at the back end of last year, and based on his form in trials I can see him carrying that over.

This may be a bold prediction, but I think Leilua will have a very remarkable year this season.

Now we get to the engine room, with the props. Ever since his debut all the way back in 2013, Paul Vaughan has gone from strength to strength. He made the NSW Country side for the second time in a row last year and produced some very impressive all-round performances. He is only 24, and is already looking like a future representative forward.



If Austin is a Viking, then Shannon Boyd is a giant from Norse mythology. The Raiders have some huge forwards, but Boyd towers over all of them. The dude is just too big, and it usually requires three guys to tackle him due to his ridiculous stature.

On more than one occasion in his career, Boyd has crossed the try line not because of any skill but because he is just too big to stop at close range. He also seems like he is only just working out how big he is compared to the average player, and as his confidence grows he will get better and better.

The second row is the strongest aspect of this side, with every one of those players being established, talented first graders or very promising youngsters.

In 2015, Josh Papalii scored eight tries, played representative football for Queensland and showed everyone just what he is capable off again. I think it has been proven multiple times that you just need to give Papalii a short ball close to the line and he will crash over.

This is another Raiders forward with a hulking, hard to tackle frame, which is a common theme for this team.

With all of the great English imports the Raiders have made over the past few years there is a lot of pressure on Whitehead, and from what I have seen he looks the goods. He is a dominant runner who will add another dimension to an already ridiculously good attacking game.

Whitehead is a smaller, but much more mobile Papalii, who runs just as hard. He was influential in England’s Test series win against New Zealand last year and once he adapts to the NRL he will prove just how good he is.

Shaun Fensom is a player with a point to prove. Something tells me he is on the way out at Canberra. There are a lot of conflicting opinions about Fensom, but it is no secret that the guy is essentially a brick wall in defence, and has pretty decent attacking stats as well.



But with all the young second row talent that can be found in Canberra’s system, he will need to improve a lot to show that he is worth sticking around. But this year I think he will really step it up.

On to Sia Soliola. Who actually predicted that he would be good last year? He was average at the Roosters, went overseas for five years and then came back and played out of his skin.

He was one of the best second rowers of the year last year, having a wonderful attacking game and a serviceable defensive game. Given he spent a bit of last year adapting to NRL again, he will only improve this year.

Joseph Tapine is a very good, young second rower. There is a reason Newcastle acted like a jealous ex-girlfriend once he announced he was leaving them. He is pure quality.

He is undoubtedly overpaid, however since Canberra are paying a lot of player unders, they can afford to take this risk with him and if this risk pays off, they will be very well rewarded.

If you have been paying attention to this so far then there is one general, underlying theme with this side, and that is its potent attacking ability. They can score points from across the park really, with Hodgson, Sezer, Croker and Austin all capable of creating points.

Weaknesses

Jack Wighton… I don’t know about him. He seems to me to be a poor man’s Josh Dugan. The guy has decent kick returns and isn’t a sloppy defender but he is obviously just a centre that is playing fullback because of the Tedesco backflip and the lack of better alternatives.

Wighton doesn’t have the ball-playing skills that a lot of fullbacks are expected to have these days. He is very talented, and if he was playing in the centres he would be a strength to this side. But for such an attack-based side not to have a fullback that can create points is a big weakness.



The Raiders are basically anorexic on props. After losing Dane Tilse and Shillington they haven’t replaced them with anyone. So although both Vaughan and Boyd are very good, who else do they have?

Frank-Paul Nu’uausala is damaging on his day, but his days are very few and far between. And Jeff Lima is trash tier. He wasn’t even playing well in the Super League, how do you expect he will handle first grade with the big boys in the NRL? My answer is very poorly.

Then there are the two biggest weaknesses for the Raiders.

Firstly, you probably notice that a lot of these players have defensive issues, and that is because this side has defensive issues. The team couldn’t defend to save its life last year. The only reasons they failed to make the finals was because of their defence – the amount of games they lost by eight points or less proves this.

The biggest issue was the edge defence, it just seems like the wingers and centres don’t even attempt to communicate with each other, which is silly. As good as Sis Waqa, Croker, Edrick Lee and Leilua are offensively, they need to learn to tighten up their defence.

If the Raiders really want to make the eight, they need to sort this out, because it was just too easy to score against them by the end of the year.

I have been avoiding trying to mention him up until now, but I can’t anymore. It is time to talk about the man, the myth, the legend, good old Ricky Stuart.

He that has seen every single one of his previously coached clubs crash and burn (with the exception of Parramatta, he just let the fire keep going). However if you keep doing the same thing over and over, no matter how talentless, clueless and dopey you are, you will eventually get better.



Stuart has improved, especially in regards to his recruitment.

You have to applaud his recruitment last year, he has evolved from paying $20,000 a minute to Karl Filiga a few years ago to securing some of the best buys of the season in 2015 like Hodgson, Austin and Soliola.

Stuart also took a team that were favourites for the wooden spoon and made them finals contenders, which is quite impressive. He deserves respect for cutting Campese, too, because a lot of coaches wouldn’t have the balls to do that.

There are also reports from a lot of Raiders and non-Raiders players that they love playing for the guy. He has improved on the whole and you can tell because of the improvement in the Raider’s attacking game over the past two years.

However, just because you seasoned your raw chicken curry doesn’t mean it is still good, and Stuart still has big problems.

Again, I hate to harp on about it but defence is this side’s Achilles heel, and considering 50 per cent of the game is defence it is more like an Achilles torso.

Until Stuart can learn to teach his side decent defence, he will not be a good coach. As much as attacking sides are great to watch, you need acceptable levels of defence if you are going to be a consistent top eight threat.

Expectations

A very strong second row, a great halves pairing that complements one another, a great dummy half, decent backs and all around very good attack will be enough for the Raiders to get into the top eight.



They may be very light on front rowers, have a substandard fullback and defensive issues, but this year the defence will improve just enough for them to make it. I predict a seventh place finish for the Raiders next year, so good job Stuart. You might finally get a side that was struggling into the top eight.

Conclusion

If the Raiders manage to sign Junior Paulo as rumoured, then this might be the start of a decent streak of finals appearances for the Green Machine. His arrival would fix one of their three weaknesses, and give them an excellent prop rotation. Things look on the up for the Raiders for the first time since 2012.