Canberra will get “eaten alive” in their biggest clash of the NRL season so far if they don’t tidy up completion-rate woes that have plagued them in recent weeks.
Coach Ricky Stuart says not even their five-game winning streak at Melbourne’s AAMI Park will save them if they turn in another dismal ball-handling display that almost brought them undone against bottom-ranked Wests Tigers last weekend.
They turned in a 62 per cent completion rate against the Tigers to back up a similarly-poor 68 per cent a week before, way down from their season average of 80 per cent.
It’s the clear room for improvement needed for the Raiders ahead of a high-stakes showdown where the victor will end the round inside the top four and be well-placed to hold onto a double chance come finals.
If they can’t improve that against the Storm, coach Stuart says the result won’t be close.
“We’ll get eaten alive if we complete our sets of six like last week,” Stuart said.
“We’ve got to be better than that, we have been all year with our completion rates … that was a one-off for us, but we’ll get that right.
“We’ve got to be better than last week, and we are a better team than last week.”
Melbourne have named winger Xavier Coates and halfback Jahrome Hughes to return from respective injuries, but reports still suggest the latter may be unlikely to play with his ankle not yet recovered.
Hughes missed last weekend’s loss to Penrith and he will again be replaced by young half Jonah Pezet if he drops out of the side.
Canberra will debut 18-year-old centre Ethan Strange after Sebastian Kris and Jarrod Croker went down injured in recent weeks but are otherwise unchanged, leaving the impressive Jordan Rapana to continue in his fullback role.
Stuart laughed off his side’s impressive record in Melbourne and denied he’d found a hidden secret to crack open the Storm, suggesting all it would do would be fire up Storm coach Craig Bellamy.
“It just makes it harder,” he said.
“I know what ‘Bellyache’ is like, he wouldn’t be real happy with our record down there at Melbourne … I know he’d be working overtime.
“We haven’t put any further pressure on each other, we all know that it’s an important game in regards to the top four.
“But we can’t be just looking at the outcome, we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got all the processes in place to get the side to play well too.”
By Alex Mitchell in Canberra
