Ricky Stuart praised his young Raiders team for learning valuable lessons in a heavy Dolphins loss.
Ricky Stuart said his inexperienced Raiders team learned valuable lessons after they were "not up to a standard" in their heavy 62-24 loss to the Dolphins to close out the season.
Canberra rested 11 key players on Sunday with the minor premiership wrapped up and it showed on the scoreboard, with Stuart's men struggling to contain a dynamic Dolphins side that was stacked with attacking threats all over the park.
Speaking in his post-game press conference, Stuart said Sunday's game gave him an "opportunity" to look at a handful of younger players who had previously seen limited playing time in the NRL.
"It was a good position for me to actually give them the opportunity to play because you get a read on how they handle certain scenarios and situations," Stuart said.
"Today you can see by the amount of errors that we made, we were on the backfoot for 70-odd minutes of the game and you can't do that at this level.
"... Those types of scenarios that they face there and certain parts of that game tonight were very much a great learning curve for them in regards to what happens in NRL if you're not up to a standard."