If looks could kill, I’d have dropped dead during that post-match press conference nine years ago and you wouldn’t be reading this today.
“When you write crap articles about me the way you do, why should I talk to you?” Ricky Stuart asked with an icy stare.
When I asked what he was talking about, he replied:
“Have a think about it. I’ve only read one column of yours and that was two weeks ago. It’s compulsory for me to come in here, but it’s not compulsory for me to talk to blokes like you.”
The man they call “Sticky” has a way of getting his message across.
I’d always got along well with Stuart, from the moment I met him on my first day at the Canberra Times in 1996. We spent three years together in the national capital, and at one point I was ghost-writing his newspaper column. After he finished playing and became a coach, we would always exchange greetings whenever we bumped into each other.
So what had I written, to incinerate a relationship that dated back 20 years?
With the benefit of hindsight, that column hasn’t aged well.
Ricky Stuart has always worn his heart on his sleeve.Credit: Getty Images
The gist of it was querying whether Canberra had overspent by signing a young forward from Newcastle who had made just one starting appearance in the NRL. My argument was that recruiting unproven rookies on big dollars was risky business, and to reinforce the point I referred to a couple of players Stuart had signed at Cronulla, who for whatever reason had not measured up.
I wasn’t intending to belittle Stuart, but on reflection I understood why he interpreted it that way. He felt I was having a crack at him, and perhaps more pertinently at the young player they had signed – a kid by the name of Joseph Tapine.
Ricky Stuart with his 2019 Canberra Raiders team, who narrowly lost the grand final to the Roosters.Credit: Getty
Suffice to say, nine years down the track, I got that one wrong. Whatever Tapine has cost the Raiders, he has repaid them tenfold. The champion forward has proven to be one of their best signings.
I decided the only option was to man up and admit my mistake. I could have texted or emailed Stuart, but I figured the offence I had caused him was in a public forum, so the only fair outcome was to do something I’d never done before – I wrote a column to apologise.
He texted a few days later. All was forgiven, and we laugh about it now.
I recount the anecdote to give you an insight into the Ricky Stuart I’ve come to know. He’s a man of principle, and he doesn’t tolerate fools. He’s fiercely loyal, and he expects the same in return. He wears his heart on his sleeve, especially after a loss. And he has a remarkable eye for a footballer, which largely explains why the Raiders are second on the NRL ladder at the halfway point in their season.
A quick scan of Canberra’s roster reveals the most experienced player they have recruited has been Jamal Fogarty, who had played 39 top-grade games before he was willingly released by Gold Coast, despite having two years to run on his contract.
The rest would appear, on paper at least, an eclectic crew of rookies, discards, Pommies and Kiwis, mixed in with local talent. Yet somehow Stuart has this unfashionable Green Machine humming like a Rolls Royce.
It’s not that the Raiders don’t court established stars. But if a recruitment target thinks the national capital is too cold and boring, then they can go and play somewhere else. Canberra would rather invest in youngsters they can develop.
As Raiders CEO Don Furner put it: “The only big name we’ve ever signed is Mal Meninga [in 1986].
“You go through all our history, nobody knew who Gary Belcher was, or Gary Coyne, or the Walters brothers when we signed them. Nobody knew who Ruben Wiki was when we signed him from New Zealand.”
The same can be said of their latter-day counterparts, such as Kaeo Weekes, Ethan Strange, Matt Timoko, Savelio Tamale, Xavier Savage, Tom Starling, Matty Nicholson … indeed almost every player in their squad.
Furner said Canberra rely on a “Moneyball” approach, a good scouting network, and Stuart’s ability to take a rough diamond and turn him into a polished gem. The result is a tough, unified, unrelenting and rapidly improving team, built and rebuilt in Stuart’s own image.
And that brings me, in roundabout fashion, to a question I’ve been pondering all season: is it now time to acknowledge that Stuart has become a better coach than he was a player?
Ricky Stuart was arguably the best playmaker of his era.Credit: Fairfax
One of rugby league’s most widely accepted adages is that great players don’t necessarily make great coaches. The likes of Wally Lewis, Mal Meninga, Brad Fittler, Terry Lamb and Wayne Pearce all struggled with the week-to-week grind of running a club. The late Bob Fulton was a notable exception, winning premierships as a player and coach.
There’s no doubt Stuart was one of the champion halfbacks of his era. He played in four grand finals with the Raiders, winning three. He steered NSW to four State of Origin series triumphs and, despite the presence of Allan Langer, he wore the green and gold in nine Tests. He would have undoubtedly played more rep football, if not for the Super League war that fractured the game.
At the peak of his powers, between 1989 and 1994, there was no more dominant force.
As former Newtown, Canterbury, Balmain, Western Suburbs and Newcastle coach Warren Ryan put it: “Ricky commanded the whole footy field, with those long spirals [passes] … he put something on everyone, from fullback to front row. If there was an opportunity beckoning a mile away, Ricky would spot it and, bang, he’d put the ball there.”
Ryan changed the game with his feared up-and-in “umbrella” defensive system. Stuart’s skill allowed Canberra to overcome it and beat Balmain in the 1989 grand final.
Ricky Stuart celebrates with Brad Fittler after winning a title in his first season as a coach with the Rooster in 2002.Credit: Craig Golding
After a second knee reconstruction in 2000 forced his retirement as a player, within two years Stuart was a head coach in the NRL, handed the reins of Sydney Roosters at the age of 35.
He struck premiership gold in his debut season, and could easily have guided the Roosters to a hat-trick of titles. They suffered grand final heartache in 2003 and 2004, losing narrowly to Penrith and Canterbury respectively, but during those seasons Stuart’s team won 59 of the 82 games they contested. At the time, they were as formidable as Penrith and Melbourne have been in recent years.
In quick succession, Stuart was coaching NSW and then Australia.
Raiders coach Tim Sheens celebrates with Ricky Stuart and Laurie Daley after the 1989 grand final.Credit: Craig Golding
He left the Roosters after five seasons and joined Cronulla for a four-year stint, guiding them to a preliminary final in 2008. Then followed a season at Parramatta, who were wooden-spooners when he arrived and wooden-spooners when he left a year later.
That unhappy tenure was cut short so that Stuart could return home to Canberra, where he has spent the past 12 seasons, in the process becoming only the fifth coach in rugby league history to pass the 500-game milestone.
He’s the perfect fit, but it hasn’t been an easy gig. Stuart has never coached a Canberra team as strong as the one he played in. Nor do the Raiders have the financial clout he once enjoyed at the Roosters. Yet he took his home-town team agonisingly close to premiership glory in 2019, and this season is shaping as his best opportunity to go all the way.
The 58-year-old has zero interest in personal accolades. For starters, he knows that every week in the NRL is fraught with danger, and he doesn’t want to tempt fate. And he insists that any success the Raiders enjoy is because of collective effort, not just from his players, but also the staff.
“We can’t be getting ahead of ourselves, because there’s still a long way to go,” Stuart said. “If you lose two or three games in a row, the narrative changes and nobody is interested in you. So that’s why I think it’s important to stay very humble.”
But he is clearly proud of what his team have delivered this season, declaring after last week’s gutsy win in Auckland: “I’ve got a tough team there, mate. Never once I doubted their toughness or resilience. I know what’s deep under the jumper.”
The people who know Stuart well, such as his original coach Tim Sheens, are more inclined to give credit where it’s due.
“He’s as good a coach as anyone that’s coaching at the moment, that’s for sure,” Sheens said. “He was obviously a very intelligent player, and you often see that those guys who play in the spine move into coaching. They understand the game, because they run it. And Ricky was certainly one of those players.
“He would call the plays, play by play almost. If the boys got off track, he’d be into them on the field. He was basically coaching as a player.”
Ryan, who still calls Stuart from time to time to talk footy, said: “I can’t imagine anybody other than Ricky doing that job.
“He is Canberra. He’s the heart and soul of the whole thing. How could anybody else possibly coach them? He embodies what Canberra is all about. And the players and people in the national capital who follow league obviously recognise that.”
As for whether Stuart was a better player or coach, Ryan says he has proven himself in both roles.
“He’s a terrific coach, and he was a terrific player,” Ryan said. “How you compare the two, I don’t know. When you’re a player, you’re the beneficiary, or the victim, of your own performance. But when you’re a coach, you’ve got to factor in that you’re the beneficiary or the victim of a lot of other people’s performances, as well. Different beasts altogether. Different beasts.”
On that point, Stuart agrees. “I never lose sight of the fact that the success a coach has hinges on the talent of the players he coaches,” he said.
During my time in Canberra, I once visited Stuart’s former home in stately Red Hill, in among the embassies and mansions, literally next door to his teammate Bradley Clyde. The treasure trove of mementoes in his snooker room were a reminder of what a player he was: framed Test, Origin and grand final jerseys, as well as the Dally M, Rothmans and Clive Churchill medals.
One of the few honours that has eluded him, during a rugby league career spanning close to four decades, is the Dally M coach-of-the-year award. At this point in proceedings, he appears at short odds to rectify that anomaly later this year.
Not that he has given it a second thought. He’s looking no further down the track than Sunday’s clash at Allianz Stadium against the Roosters, the club he piloted to a premiership while still on his L-plates.
“That stuff really doesn’t interest me,” he said. “That’s not why I coach. If you want longevity, and to have some success in the game, you can’t coach for you. It’s about what’s best for the club, for each individual and for the team.”
It would take a braver man than me to query that logic.
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