Remember when the walls started caving in at the Canberra Raiders' multi-million dollar Braddon base? When Jack Wighton decided he would pack his bags and head to South Sydney on a cut-price four-year deal in search of a premiership?
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The Canberra Raiders were supposedly in a world of trouble. Who could they find to replace their star five-eighth, who has won Dally M Medal as the competition's player of the year and Clive Churchill Medal as the best afield in the NRL grand final?
Their hopes of finding a marquee replacement in a player market so bare had not put Canberra's premiership hopes on ice, but left them on the Weber for an hour too long.
That's the nature of the rugby league landscape, where perspective gives way to pandemonium.
Selection dramas, training track scuffles and impending coaching upheavals at rival clubs have suddenly led Raiders coach Ricky Stuart into a world of possibility, so it's time to take a look around.
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WALKING A FINE LINE
Sam Walker is vowing to force his way back into the Sydney Roosters' NRL squad, the former Dally M rookie of the year refusing to walk away from Bondi without a fight.
But there is division over the style of football the Roosters want Walker to play, with the man once anointed as Daly Cherry-Evans' eventual successor for Queensland demoted to reserve grade as Joseph Manu and Luke Keary pair up in the NRL.
The 20-year-old is contracted until 2025 but rival clubs are circling amid talk the style the Roosters want to play - highly influenced by halves mentor Cooper Cronk - is dousing Walker's creative instinct.
Walker emerged as one of the premier young halves in the country, playing an off-the-cuff style which his father Ben and uncle Shane are renowned for.
PLAYING WITH FIRE
What if 'Hook' gets hooked? That's the burning question for Dragons playmaker Ben Hunt, who will reconsider his future if Anthony Griffin is axed as St George Illawarra coach.
The odds are shortening by the day as Griffin tries to salvage something from a quickly deteriorating season, with Hunt set to shift from halfback to hooker in a desperate bid to snap a four-game losing streak.
There is an argument to say hooker is Hunt's best position given how well he performs in the role for Queensland and Australia - but rival clubs could make a million dollar play for him at halfback.
Manager Col Davis says he is not shopping Hunt around given he is contracted until 2025, but speculation about the 33-year-old's future is rife as Dragons power brokers explore new coaching options.
BROOKVALE TO BRUCE
Training scraps and questions about his fitness and desire to improve are hardly ingredients for one of your club's highest-paid players, but that's just the cocktail Manly have in Josh Schuster.
The 21-year-old has long been regarded as one of the club's shining lights but Schuster, who is a free agent as of November 1, has struggled to string together an extended stint in the top grade amid a run of soft-tissue injuries and is now on ice to rehabilitate an ongoing quadriceps injury and improve his fitness.
With questions already hovering over Schuster's ability to fulfil his potential on the northern beaches, he was then involved in a training bust-up with reserve grader Dean Matterson, with the pair needing to be separated by prop Josh Aloiai.
Raiders mentors Ricky Stuart and Michael Maguire are notorious for running a tight ship. Maybe some tough love in Canberra would be enough to help Schuster realise what he is capable of.
TAKEAWAY FROM TIGER TOWN
Luke Brooks has spent years playing like the weight of world rests on his shoulders - but there is life in one of the game's most maligned halves as he prepares to hit the open market.
His Wests Tigers teammates launched a passionate defence of the halfback after he came under fire for an NRL losing streak which had stretched beyond a year, with critics frustrated Brooks has not delivered on the potential he showed on debut a decade ago consistently enough.
Then the million-dollar playmaker bounced back with a blinder to spark the upset of the year against the Penrith Panthers, nailing two 40/20s and reminding the rest what he is capable of.
If rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns thinks leaving the Tigers could be enough to unlock Brooks' potential, who are we to argue?
CANBERRA'S BACKYARD
Is the answer staring Stuart in the face?
Brad Schneider has found his voice and now just wants another chance to find his feet in the NRL, with the 22-year-old seen as an investment for the future should the club look within its own four walls.
Schneider and 28-year-old Matt Frawley - who has impressed in limited opportunities for Canberra in the NRL - are both off-contract at the end of the season, and backing one of the pair to partner Jamal Fogarty would allow the Raiders to go to the market in search of a fullback or a forward to bolster their premiership hopes.
"[Frawley's] record for the Raiders is really, really good. He has won nearly all of the games he has started at five-eighth for the club," former Raiders half Sam Williams said on SEN's Saturdays in the Capital.
"We're looking at a player here who we know can do the job, who we know can go onto that left hand side and provide a really good kicking option down the left with his left boot.
"What it does allow, is allow a lot of money to be spent elsewhere. We have a couple of really good halves here."
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