{"id":123291,"date":"2021-09-02T20:41:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T20:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=123291"},"modified":"2021-09-02T23:57:18","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T23:57:18","slug":"we-lost-our-mojo-ricky-laments-season-missteps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=123291","title":{"rendered":"'We lost our mojo': Ricky laments season missteps"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dejected, frustrated Ricky Stuart was scathing in his summary of Canberra's performance against the Roosters on Thursday night<\/a>, and lamented a season of missed opportunities and player exits.<\/p>\n

The Raiders'<\/a> hopes for finals footy all but ended in Mackay after a 40-16 shellacking to an injury-hit Roosters side<\/a>. <\/p>\n

With his arms-crossed, Stuart struggled to find words to express his disappointment in a brief press conference.<\/p>\n

"It's an empty feeling," he said.<\/p>\n

"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.<\/p>\n

"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."<\/p>\n

\"Ricky<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

"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.<\/p>\n

"Because I mean, f–k it. We couldn't beat that team… Christ, we're waiting for another week to get beaten."<\/p>\n

\"Canberra<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

"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.<\/p>\n

"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."<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/NRLonNine\/status\/1433405538264498178<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Stuart was curt.<\/p>\n

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." <\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123291"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123293,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123291\/revisions\/123293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}