Ricky Stuart has accused referees of “guessing” when to award set-restarts after the Raiders’ loss to the Storm in Melbourne.
Canberra lost both the set-restart count (7-4) and penalty count (5-4) on Saturday night in the side’s third-straight defeat.
Speaking to media, the most fined coach in NRL history put himself in contention for another when he chose to ignore an unrelated question and answer an earlier one that was directed at skipper Elliott Whitehead.
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While the skipper gave a diplomatic answer, Stuart did not.
“To answer your question (pointing to the journalist), we were on the wrong side of the guessing game again,” Stuart said.
“They’re just guessing mate. Those six agains, they just guess – ‘I’ll give one away here, I’ll give one away there’.”
The loss dropped the Raiders to 12th on the ladder as their freefall continued.
Stuart reshuffled his spine ahead of the Storm clash, moving Adam Cook into the halves and Kaeo Weekes to fullback.
“You’ve seen our last two performances, something had to give. I can’t just sit on my hands,” he said.
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“I’ve got to make changes to try and spark revival and that was there tonight, but we were just poor with the ball.”
Weekes provided the only highlight for the Raiders when he scored to level the score in the opening minutes of the second half.
He ran for 207 metres, but also made three errors on a wet night in Melbourne.
Stuart defended his young star, and pointed out he gets his hands on the footy much more than others around him, which naturally leads to a higher error-count.
“When you turn so much football over in your end of the footy field, you’re going to have more kicks to defend and it was tough conditions for the back three,” he said.
“Kaeo is a very, very good football player.”
Canberra next face the Knights, Warriors and Rabbitohs – three sides who currently sit in the same vicinity as them on the table – in a bid to move back towards the eight.