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Canberra players were given the day off on Monday.
Their only club commitment, after the 94-minute epic that was their heartbreaking extra-time loss to Brisbane the previous day, was the Mal Meninga Medal event later that evening.
Some, like Jed Stuart and Ethan Strange, had a sleep in before embarking on their suit fittings together. Others processed the defeat on their own, before heading to Parliament House for the annual presentation night.
The mood upon arrival was sombre. Agonisingly close to a preliminary final, after a thriller in which several contentious calls went against them, the Green Machine’s quest to break a 31-year premiership drought became infinitely harder.
When the players took their seats for the event, all eyes were on Ricky Stuart. It was the first time most of them had seen their coach since they left the sheds after the gut-wrenching defeat. Even son and winger Jed, who still lives at home, hadn’t laid eyes on him.
Their last interaction was immediately after the game. Stuart was unable to eat, while Jed downed a burger and chips in silence.
Corey Horsburgh and the Raiders were disconsolate after their loss to the Broncos.Credit: Getty Images
“There wasn’t too much talking going on,” Jed said. “I had a glass of milk; he had a red wine.”
No one rides the result, or feels a loss more acutely, than Ricky Stuart. So how would he react after being on the wrong end of one of the greatest finals games ever played?
When he got up on stage as one of the first speakers of the night, everyone got their answer.
The master of ceremonies nervously suggested that, given what had transpired the previous day, it was likely that Stuart was feeling a bit flat.
The Raiders console Jamal Fogarty on Sunday.Credit: Getty Images
A hush fell upon the gathering as they waited for Stuart to respond.
“Getting a phone call at 5am in Las Vegas about Hudson Young getting into a stink with a teammate in an elevator, now that left me feeling flat,” Stuart said.
The room erupted.
Instantly, all the tension dissipated. If Ricky could get over it, so could everyone else.
“It was a bit of an elephant in the room with the loss the night before, so there’s no one better to bring up that elephant than him and break the ice a bit,” said Jed Stuart, who added that his father had become better at moving on from a loss in recent seasons.
Ricky Stuart took Sunday’s loss as well as anyone in Canberra.Credit: Getty Images
“He spoke really well at the presentation; he did a good job.”
Canberra chief executive Don Furner added: “Ricky getting up and talking early in the night took all the tension out of the room and the flatness out of the night.”
Even Young, who was the butt of the joke after his infamous drunken Vegas altercation with Morgan Smithies, could see the funny side.
“He’s been around for a long time, and he can read the room in many different scenarios,” Young said. “He’s been in situations like this before and he’s got so much experience.
“We didn’t get the win, but we still know where we’re going as a team, and I’m sure this year we’re gonna get there.”
And so began the task of building the Raiders up again for another play-off game, where the stakes are higher still. This time it’s an elimination clash against Cronulla at GIO Stadium on Saturday.
“It’s obviously a game of highs and lows,” Jamal Fogarty said. “I think us as a playing group, we’ve kind of picked each other’s spirits up.
“Obviously it sucks that we lost. The sun comes up the next day, and you get another opportunity to train all week, to win another game of footy on the weekend.”
It’s a perspective that comes from significant life experience. Before he became an established NRL halfback, Fogarty was a youth worker on the Gold Coast.
The result of a football game pales into insignificance after you’ve witnessed how young people live on the streets.
“I’ve worked with kids who were genuinely homeless,” Fogarty said. “They’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just sleeping here’, and they’d have a sheet on a piece of cement behind a building where no one could see them.
“On the weekend, yes, it’s a very important game and we love rugby league, but we get to go home to a bed, nice house, you have a shower, you’ve got food. Being a youth worker and seeing the situations that those kids are in at 13, 14 or 15, they have no support crew and they’re homeless, sleeping on the street.
“There’s no point in us whinging about losing a game of football because we’ve still got a pretty good life. It did put things into perspective, and I still carry that with me.”
That’s not to say Fogarty isn’t heeding the hard-earned lessons from the loss. Given he wears the No.7 jersey, the former Titans playmaker understands that it was his job to ice the game when his side went ahead by 16 points with 25 minutes to go.
“I think I needed to just slow the play down a little bit,” Fogarty said. “Obviously I could have executed a couple of kicks a lot better, especially that goal kick that I missed that Strangey [Ethan Strange] scored, that could have put us up by four.
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“And then the two-point field goal doesn’t come in range for Reece Walsh and obviously, we know what happened after that.
“For myself, it’s about just keep putting the team first, keep working hard and keep playing my style of footy.”
The Raiders feel they are done with reviewing and brooding, knowing there is an even bigger game ahead of them.
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