A $50 stitch-up… Leichhardt miracle and simple two-word rule: Inside Ricky Stuart’s inner-sanctum Raiders

They say Canberra is a town built on committees and compromise, but the Raiders have always survived on the exact opposite.

You’re either a ‘Green Man’ or you’re not: it’s that simple.

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Like Yellowstone, once you get that brand, it’s for life. This isn’t a revolving door of corporate suits; it’s a family business with a very long memory.

It started with the founder, the late Les McIntyre, and the bloodline continues through his son and former Chairman, John.

It’s held together by the Furner name. CEO Don Furner has been at the helm since 2007 — the longest-serving CEO in the game — providing a level of stability other clubs would kill for. It’s a legacy passed down from his father, Don Sr., the club’s inaugural coach.

There is a local saying that you only get a job at the Raiders if you’re from Queanbeyan. It’s a joke with a heavy dose of truth, but the reality is more specific.

Ricky Stuart and his tribe come from Narrabundah. It’s a suburb sitting just five kilometres from the Queanbeyan border, but in terms of footy DNA, they are one and the same. Ricky went to school with Don Furner at St Edmund’s, and that connection is baked into the club’s history.

When you sit in that building, you realise you aren’t just working for a football club. You are working within a lineage where the coach and the CEO have known each other since the schoolyard. It creates a closed-loop culture of trust that is unique in the NRL.

But that trust comes with a price of entry: you have to be able to survive the inner-sanctum politics and Ricky’s sense of humour.

He loves a stitch-up. It’s how he tests the air in the room. One of his favourites is the silence tax. He’ll look at the staff and decree that the first person to speak to a certain individual is down $50. Now, assistants aren’t on Stuart’s tax bracket, so when the call is made, you vanish.

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I remember one morning heading onto the field for training and the target was the late, great recruitment guru Peter ‘Skull’ Mulholland.

As we’re setting up drills, Skull comes wandering over looking for a chat. I immediately headed the other way, suddenly fascinated by a tackle bag thirty metres away.

He turned toward another coach; same result. Poor old Pete wandered the grass like a ghost — nobody would make eye contact; nobody would acknowledge he existed.

Eventually, Joel Carbone — the nicest bloke in the world — couldn’t take it. He trotted over to Skull, happy to cop the fifty-buck hit just to make the man feel human again.

You’d be the ‘it’ man for twenty minutes before the penny finally dropped. Unless Joel was there to save you, you paid the price of admission.

That admission price buys you more than a job; it buys you a place in a mirror image of the man himself. In many ways, Ricky Stuart is the only man who could coach the Raiders. Through sheer force of personality, he has instilled a philosophy that is a mix of grit, obsession, and a relentless ‘Green Man’ standard.

Ricky moves through the game with the mindset of the ultimate underdog leader. He thrives on being hated by the elite, using that perceived disrespect to fuel a ‘circle the wagons’ mentality. He is the guardian at the gate, ensuring that even if they are forgotten by the papers, they are feared on the field.

He is a players’ coach, able to hit the emotion to get a squad bristling on cue. His tactics are solid, but it’s his competitive side that hits outsiders in the face first.

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I saw it early on. In 2015, we were playing the Tigers at Leichhardt on a brutal, windy day. We were down 22-0 after only twenty minutes.

As the attack coach, I was squirming in my seat, watching everything go pear-shaped. Ricky sat right beside me, repeating like a mantra: “We can win this, if we can just get one, we can win this.”

I’m looking at Ricky, then back at the scoreboard, thinking: Are you watching the same game I’m watching? But I figured nodding was the most honest thing I could do. Sure enough, we surged back, with Jordan Rapana crossing late to win 30-22. Stuart makes a habit of winning games when the rest of the world has already clocked out.

That care extends beyond the siren. Ricky talks a lot about ‘care’: care for team, care for club. He has been known to cry when he loses. I remember sitting beside him in the box and I kept hearing an alarm. I figured it was alerts for a horse race, but it was actually a heart rate monitor hitting a dangerous level.

It had been going off all game. Ricky eventually stopped wearing that watch. He didn’t want to hear the warning; he only wanted the fire.

That same relentless, absolute fire is what he pours into the Ricky Stuart Foundation. Born from his devotion to his daughter, Emma, the foundation has raised millions to build state-of-the-art respite centres like Ricky Stuart House in Chifley and Emma Ruby House in Cook.

It is the same ‘Green Man’ creed applied to a different arena; he doesn’t just want to help; he wants to win for these families.

Now, that fire is being tested again. After the high of being Minor Premiers in 2025, the sting of exiting in straight sets was a bitter pill. But the ‘Green Men’ have found their pulse.

After a shaky start to 2026, they got the points against a struggling Melbourne Storm side 26-22, proving that when their backs are against the wall, they are at their most dangerous.

They head to Leichhardt this Thursday to face a Tigers outfit that is desperate after a gut-wrenching 20-21 loss to the Broncos. It’s going to be a collision of two very different worlds. Benji-ball is all about the up-tempo shift, chancing the hand and playing with a flair that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The Raiders? They’re coming for the street fight. They want to punch you in the face until your nose bleeds, grinding you down until they can set their speed men free. When the dust settles, they give the footy to Kaeo Weeks or Ethan Strange and let them express themselves.

But the blueprint has a few holes this week. The Tigers will be feeling the pinch on a short turnaround, but the Raiders are facing a massive test of their depth. They’ll be making the trip without the veteran leadership of ‘Big Papa’ Josh Papalii and the strike power of an in-form Hudson Young.

Beyond the personnel, Stuart is staring at a mathematical nightmare. They sit in 13th with a differential of -63 — the third worst in the competition. Ricky will be confident the wins will come, but he knows better than anyone that if the logjam in front of them remains, for-and-against will decide who plays finals footy. A win at Leichhardt isn’t enough; they need to start making up ground on the scoreboard.

Stuart will do what he’s always done. He’ll look at his group and tell them that everyone in Sydney hates them, that the competition doesn’t respect Canberra, and that the press is too busy talking up the Tigers to even notice the Green Machine. He’ll demand the ‘next man up’ lives the creed, reminding them that the standard doesn’t drop just because the names on the back of the jerseys change.

It’ll be a sight to see on Thursday night. Both coaches prefer the sideline to the box, standing out there where they can feel the game. But if you’re standing too close to the benches, be careful — the shorter, crankier one spits.

There’s a finality to the way they do things in the capital. If you’ve got the brand, you’re family — until you aren’t. In the world of the Green Machine, you are either part of the solution or you’re headed for the ‘Train Station’.

Michael Crawley has worked as an assistant coach at the Raiders, Knights and Cowboys as well as a coaching consultant with the Dragons.