Ricky Stuart

At the full-time siren, Wighton breaks down in tears; it will be goodbye to his beloved Canberra Raiders whom he has spent more than a decade playing for.

The Raiders Five-Eight, earlier in the week, signed a four-year contract with South Sydney Rabbitohs in a quest for a premiership ring before he takes off his boots.

When news broke out that Wighton was leaving for the Bunnies, fans pointed to Coach Ricky Stuart for not handling the situation well. But a different story was told on camera in the Post-Match Interview.

Kate Ford, the girlfriend of Raiders star Ryan Sutton, has taken to Instagram appearing to take a shot at Canberra coach Ricky Stuart after the English forward was left out of the club’s team for the opening round of the NRL season.

The Raiders showed off a new-look team when the side was announced on Tuesday night with a string of selection surprises, including the club debuts of James Schiller and Adam Elliott.

Sutton was left as a replacement in the No. 18 jumper, despite having an impressive season where he played 22 games in 2021.

The saying goes that behind every good man is an even better woman and Stuart believes Masepa Papalii is that someone.

The pair were sweethearts for several years before tying the knot in late 2018. Season 2019 not only saw Papalii shift from lock to front row, it gave the 27-year-old a third Mal Meninga Medal (for the Raiders' best player) in four years.

Papalii scored six tries, made 61 tackle busts, 31 off-loads, ran for 3830 metres at an average just shy of 150 in each of his 26 games.

After last week's one-point loss to the Warriors – the third straight narrow, late loss from a winning position – Stuart attempted to divert the post-match narrative from the team's performance onto the match officials.

But after their worst performance of the year to date, Stuart admitted he had protected the players from criticism for too long and used the word "soft" no fewer than 10 times to describe a first-half capitulation that at one stage included three tries conceded in five minutes.

The unstoppable grunt factory led by massive front-row pairing Shannon Boyd (122 kilos) and Junior Paulo (123 kilos) routinely won the battle of the middle of the field that year.

Throw Josh Hodgson’s wily dummy half play into the mix and a powerful, athletic backline and Stuart had found an intoxicating recipe for rampaging attacking football that took his side to second on the ladder and a preliminary final with the Storm.