Veteran Raiders hooker Josh Hodgson has revealed a trick Ricky Stuart pulled during the week in an effort to rescue his team from its ugly patch of form.
A desperate Canberra outfit tonight took a flight to Sydney and held on valiantly against a fast-finishing Manly side, locking up just their sixth win of the season to climb to ninth on the ladder.
The crucial victory followed last week's disaster at the hands of the Titans, which saw Gold Coast steamroll Canberra 44-6 in the capital.
Hodgson said Stuart responded by canning the team's video review session, which would have clearly made for a grim couple of hours, and instead went about lifting the spirits of his troops.
"I thought this week was honestly his best week of the year," Hodgson said of Stuart on Nine's post-match coverage of the Raiders' win.
"We didn't even watch the footage of the game (against the Titans) because we all knew it was embarrassing and we all just got told to watch it on our own.
"We just spoke about bringing the energy, we had a short turnaround, he just wanted to bring the fun back to the group and create some energy from inside.
"We knew there were going to be no fans tonight and we had to create our own energy and our own atmosphere. I thought we did a great job of all that earlier in the week and it showed tonight."
Rugby league legends Andrew Johns and Peter Sterling were among the many experts who had dashed the Raiders' premierships aspirations ahead of their win over the Sea Eagles.
Canberra have taken an extraordinary plummet this season, going from grand finallists and preliminary finallists in 2019 and 2020 to the perilous position they're in after 17 rounds.
But despite the Raiders' horrible season, and the Sea Eagles' loss of key cogs Tom Trbojevic and Daly Cherry-Evans due to State of Origin III, Johns believes tonight's win reignited their finals hopes.
"Definitely, I think they can (make the finals now) for sure. And the players in rep camp – I have no doubt they'd have been watching and would be proud of their efforts," Johns said.
"The young players they've brought in – (19-year-old fullback) Xavier Savage. He didn't get many opportunities but he proved tonight he's a tough young fella, he's a player of the future.
"They just ripped in, they simplified, they got out there and played for each other, built pressure, just simplified it right down, did the basics better than Manly and they wanted it more.
"This can really lift them. I think they'll go on, I think they'll make the eight, the Raiders. After last week's performance I thought, 'Well, they're gone'. But they turned it around."
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