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There’s a saying in rugby league that you never beat Ricky Stuart’s teams, you just score more points than them.
That was never more appropriate than in the wake of the Warriors’ edge-of-the-seat 21-20 golden-point NRL victory over Stuart’s Canberra Raiders on Friday night in Auckland, with the visiting coach blasting match officials for a decision just before halftime that he claimed cost his team victory.
Stuart did not hold back in a short post-match press conference appearance before storming off, claiming match referee Todd Smith and the bunker got it wrong when they disallowed what would have been a 38th-minute score by Raiders fullback Sebastian Kris off a Jamal Fogarty grubber.
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Warriors players mob Shaun Johnson after his golden-point field goal secured a 21-20 victory over the Raiders.
Replays appeared to show Warriors wing Dallin Watene-Zelezniak getting a hand in to break up the play and Kris losing the ball as he attempted to force. The NRL’s bunker reviewed the incident and backed the referee’s on-field call of a no-try.
To rub salt into the wounds the Warriors went downfield, with the benefit of a set restart, and put fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad over for a score that gave them a handy 14-6 halftime lead.
The Raiders produced an epic second-half comeback to roar back from a 20-6 deficit inside the final quarter to level the match with two tries in the final two minutes to Elliott Whitehead and Jack Wighton, before a Shaun Johnson field goal sealed the deal on the Warriors’ first possession of golden point.
“It should never have got to golden point in regards to that decision before halftime,” said a clearly irate Stuart. “Seb Kris’ no-try, that was a high-shot and should have been a penalty try. It should never have even got to golden point.”
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Raiders coach Ricky Stuart was not a happy chappy after his team’s epic comeback came up just short.
Stuart, never the best of losers, repeated the claim when asked if it had been tough to take a golden-point defeat after such a stirring comeback in front of a crowd of just under 20,000 at Mount Smart Stadium.
“That’s what it is – they’re the rules of the game,” said the Raiders coach. “It’s a wee bit like getting hit in the head when you’ve got the ball over the goal-line to score a try, and you drop it. They’re the rules of the game too.“
Despite seeing his team suffer a seventh defeat of the season, and second to the Warriors, to drop out of the top four, Stuart said he was proud of the way his players fought back from such a daunting deficit.
”That’s probably the greatest example that people have witnessed of why I love coaching this footy team. They’re tough and there’s no give-up in them,” he said.
“To a lot of people it looked like they got away, but I know what’s within our team. I know what they’re built with. They don’t see it that way – they just look for the next try, and then they’ll look for the next one. So many people were probably wondering why we even come over here this weekend because they didn’t give us a hope in hell in regards to winning this game.”
Stuart did, though, pay his opposite number a healthy dose of respect after a defeat that clearly rankled and put the Warriors, for the time being, into third on the table, with the bye to come next week.
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Ricky Stuart thought fullback Sebastian Kris should have been awarded a penalty try late in the first half.
”That’s no disrespect to Webby, he’s doing a wonderful job, Andrew Webster,” added Stuart. “I worked with Andrew at Parramatta and I’m really enjoying the successes he’s having with the Warriors. He’s doing a really good job.”
Webster said he told his players he was rapt they found a way to get the result on a challenging night.
”I just said to the boys we tried really hard again, we executed a lot of really good stuff, so I think we improved,” said the Warriors coach. “And then we certainly didn’t execute a lot of other stuff and put pressure on ourselves. But we also played a really good team that just stayed in it the whole way.
”Shaun put a great kick into a corner with about five minutes to go, there was great pressure, and we gave away a penalty. We were on our line for a long period, then they scored off a grubber on the last play and that’s what got us in that mess.
“I think the lesson is we can’t relieve pressure when we’ve got the foot on the throat. But they’re a good enough team to put you under the cosh, and they came up with a great try.”
Much to Stuart’s chagrin, it was not enough though.
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