Ricky Stuart fumes at players, Canberra Raiders vs Wests Tigers, Round 8, press conference, Joe Tapine

Ricky Stuart was fuming at his players over their error-prone ways after they let a 14-10 lead slip to go down to the Tigers 33-14 in Round 8 at Leichhardt Oval.

It means the Raiders face finishing the round in third-last and six points adrift of the top four as their minor premiership defence already looks all but over.

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The Raiders had nine errors against the Tigers and completed 28 of 36 sets at 78 per cent and had just 33 per cent territory and 46 per cent possession in the six tries to two defeat.

And a frustrated Stuart put his players on notice in his post match press conference.

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“They can book their end of season holidays a lot earlier if we don’t start fixing our errors,” Stuart said.

“You’ve got excuses, even some injuries and suspensions. No, there’s no excuse. We put ourselves in a position to win the game.

“You go back and have a look at the set of six before they scored each try, we made an error. So you give them field position, you give them more ball, It’s not good enough.

“It’s not a team thing, it’s an individual thing, so the individual’s got to be accountable for it, it’s not good enough.”

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Despite their fifth loss of the season from eight starts, Stuart was still happy with his side’s effort and application, but stressed they can’t keep shooting themselves in the foot.

“The effort’s there, there’s a tonne of effort tonight, but I expect that,” Stuart said.

“If you want to play at this level, that’s the standard and the level of effort you’ve got to have.

“It’s not on all the errors we continue to make.

“I’m soft with them and I can come out and say I know individuals don’t try and make errors, well yeah, bullsh*t - just fix it.

“So it all comes back on us, we can’t give a good attacking team like the Tigers more position than they deserve through our errors.”

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Stuart was hopeful his side had put their error-ridden performances behind them, but conceded it is the biggest difference between their success last season and their struggles in 2026.

“I thought our last two weeks we were slowly building a better performance than our first month of football because our first month of football was error-ridden again,” Stuart said.

“And when it’s error-ridden you’ve got to tackle more, you miss more and there’s more tries.

“It’s not so much a simple fix because it’s not such a simple fix but it can be fixed, but its got to come down to individuals fixing their game.”

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