Since Ricky Stuart arrived at the Raiders, the club has never been successful without him.
Canberra have made the preliminary final nine times since 1988, and Stuart has been a part of all of them, either as a player or a coach.
It's easy to make the case that Stuart is the most important figure in the club's history. Mal Meninga changed Canberra's trajectory forever when he signed with the Raiders in 1986, Les McIntyre was the club's godfather off the field, but when it comes to overall contributions there are few who can match Stuart.
Since taking over in 2014, when Canberra was at its lowest ebb since the foundation years, Stuart has done so much for a club who very much needed it. He helped rebuild the Raiders roster on the field and their pride off it, reforging links to the community that were once lost, and through his sheer presence making them a relevant and visible presence in the NRL conversation.
There are plenty of former Raiders who are proud of Canberra, and are proud to be from Canberra, but none of them live it like Ricky Stuart.
The Raiders aren't just a team he played for, or a club he coached. To a great extent, they are who he is. He was at the Bulldogs, Eels, Roosters and Sharks, and he coached New South Wales and Australia, but at his core he was always Canberra's own.
That's what makes Canberra's current predicament so difficult. The Raiders are struggling, and have been for some time now. When a team struggles, the coach begins to feel the heat around the corner. But the Raiders are not just dealing with a coach, they are dealing with the club's favourite ever son.
Their loss to North Queensland last week, where they surrendered yet another half-time lead and yet again failed to fire much of a shot in attack, shone a light on a roster that is ailing and has been for over a year now. Starting a season 2-4 is not fatal, but they're only a loss or two away from the last rites being administered on a season that was supposed to herald a return to the finals after last seasons' struggles.
Because Stuart started his coaching career so young – he was just 35 when he took over the Roosters in 2002 – it's easy to forget that only Wayne Bennett has been coaching in the big league for longer.
But where Bennett, and the other long-serving mentor Craig Bellamy, have evolved with age, from the outside looking in Stuart still seems very similar to when he began. He is still emotional, passionate, demanding, confounding, charismatic, engaging and above all incredibly competitive. It's not he hasn't evolved, he's just stayed true to his own way. Winning isn't something he wants, it's something he needs.
They say attitude reflects leadership, and Stuart's best teams have taken on those same qualities. The 2019 and 2020 Raiders were never technically perfect with the way they played, but their effort and application drove them to heights the club hadn't seen in decades.
They didn't have pretty attacking patterns or finely-tuned game plans, they just went as hard as they could and backed themselves to outlast the opposition. Through sheer effort, they made up the difference and it took them just about as close to winning a premiership as the club will come without actually winning one.
But as quickly as the Raiders rose to those dizzying heights, they have regressed to where they were before. The problem is not the club's big guns, as Stuart pointed out after the Cowboys defeat. Joseph Tapine is in the best form of his life. After a slow start, Josh Papalii played his best game of the season and Jack Wighton is trying every trick he knows in an attempt to conjure something for the ailing attack.
Injuries have played their part – Jamal Fogarty was the big recruit of the off-season and he's yet to play a game, and Josh Hodgson barely made it five minutes into the season before his knee betrayed him – but Tom Starling has played enough good football for the Raiders to trust him as Hodgson's long-term replacement and Brad Schneider has been a rare bright spot through six rounds.
The issue hasn't been talent, but rather the progression of that talent. The Raiders have plenty of strong young forwards in the likes of Starling, Corey Horsburgh, Hudson Young and Emre Guler, but they have at best stagnated and at worst regressed over the last 12 months. It's a similar story for Semi Valemei, who the club seems intent on transforming into a centre despite the best football of his NRL career coming on the wing.
Even Nick Cotric, who has played over 100 NRL games at age 23, has yet to improve like a player in his fifth year of first grade should. His 91 run metres per game thus far in 2022 constitutes a career low and is down from a career high of 130 per game last year during his unhappy season with Canterbury.
His lack of production is symptomatic of a larger problem across the board – the Raiders just don't make metres. They have 8,555 in six games, the lowest total in the competition, despite boasting strong ball-carriers all over the park.
The solutions could be right in front of us. Recalling Jarrod Croker would allow Timoko to move to his preferred right side and give the team some much needed leadership and stability in the backline. The forward rotations have always been hard to understand, but through sheer weight of talent it's a problem that can work itself out.
Maybe there are answers none of us can see, that only Stuart can glean. Six bad weeks is not crippling, and there is enough talent here for the Raiders to work things out. But if that is going to be the case, even the most faithful Raider will find it difficult to believe it's coming this week.
The Raiders face the Panthers away, and will be the latest team to enter the howling black hole out at Penrith where the appetite for points and victories is bottomless. Canberra were actually the last team to defeat the premiers at home, way back in July of 2019, a game that seems a world away for both sides now.
When you watch that game the teams are unrecognisable, not in form but certainly in function. Plenty of the names for Penrith are the same but Nathan Cleary, Jarome Luai and Isaah Yeo had not yet become those powers who could move earth and heaven.
The Raiders back then look like the Panthers do now, battle-hardened and ready for anything, a rugged band of rock-breaking shitkickers who backed down from nobody.
Canberra's next trip to Penrith came around this time last year. It was a prime-time battle between two top contenders until Penrith won, handily, and they didn't just win they smacked the Raiders in the mouth and dared them to do something about it.
It was an ugly, spiteful match, as Canberra could not match the intensity of the younger, angrier Panthers. It was Penrith who were ascendant and fearsome, Penrith who feared nothing and nobody, Penrith who refused to blink, Penrith who did the beating and Canberra who were the beaten.
Plenty of other things have happened to Canberra since then – George Williams's ugly departure for one, Hodgson's injury for another – but looking back it seems like the point of divergence. The Panthers roughed up just about everyone last year, and have done so again this season. It takes special teams to stare them down, and the Raiders don't special any more. They feel just like everyone else.
Stuart's coaching tenure will not live and die on this match, and nor should it. It will take a long time for the pressure to mount, because Canberra can often still be out of sight and out of mind for many.
At the very least, Stuart will be given until the end of the year. In their entire history, the Raiders have only ever sacked one coach midway through a season. Snap decisions are not their way. If he does make it to the end of 2022, Stuart will surpass Tim Sheens as the most-capped coach in Raiders history.
It's a credit to his longevity that every single time the drums have started beating for Stuart, he has managed to come back from the brink of coaching death and built another contender.
Maybe the these struggles are a bridge to the future, a slight valley between peaks, and Stuart will save the Raiders again like he has so many times before.
If he doesn't, it's hard to know where Canberra will go or what they're supposed to do to be successful again. For almost four decades, the Raiders have been a threat when Stuart has been there, and without him they've barely been on the radar.
It's a lot to walk away from and a difficult choice to make, but if the heat keeps coming around the corner it won't be long until it's not a choice at all, even for a favourite son.
