The Canberra Raiders have lost five straight games, and the bitter reality facing the green machine is that they are currently among the worst teams in the competition.
That's not to say they are the worst team on paper.
On paper, they still have nine players left over from the 2019 NRL grand final loss to the Sydney Roosters, being Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, Jordan Rapana, Nick Cotric, Jack Wighton, Josh Papalii, Elliott Whitehead, Joseph Tapine, Emre Guler and Corey Horsburgh.
The problem is that, in the space of less than two and a half seasons, most of those nine players have fallen off the side of a cliff when it comes to their form.
Nicoll-Klokstad had his injury problems, Cotric spent a stint at the Bulldogs before returning, Wighton has gone from a Dally M candidate to someone who is lucky if he plays one or two really good games per year (genuinely, he was excellent in Round 1 against the Cronulla Sharks), Papalii isn't the same player he was, Whitehead is still consistent but needs to be surrounded by brilliance, and the two younger players in Guler and Horsburgh have failed to kick on to the extent they were supposed to.
It could be argued out of that group that Tapine - who is now the New Zealand Maori captain and a shoo-in for the New Zealand side for the end of year Rugby League World Cup - is the only player of the nine who have actively improved.
The Raiders have of course also had other problems since that 2019 grand final. The departure of George Williams hardly helped the club, and neither did that of John Bateman.
Other associated and assorted contract issues have hit the green machine hard, but the failure to develop or hold levels from current players suggests they got lucky, more than anything else, during that fabled 2019 run.
It could certainly be argued that some of the issues have been out of the club's hands, and a long-term injury to highly-regarded arrival Jamal Fogarty hasn't helped, but it certainly hasn't been the be all and end all of the club's problems in 2021.
Fogarty being on field is unlikely to have done much to the way they have been playing in the last five weeks, with a forward pack who have been badly beaten at every turn.
The second half fade outs - and a lack of fitness, discipline and care - have continued to haunt Ricky Stuart's side as well.
Zero Tackle analysis at the end of the 2021 season showed that if every game stopped at halftime last season, the Raiders were the seventh best team in the competition. If every game had of started at halftime and only included second half scorelines though, the men from the nation's capital were down in 11th spot, conceding an extra 70 points during second half efforts at almost three per game, and scoring 45 less points per game. All told, the difference was around five points for and against between the first and second half, which, over the course of a season where some games were better than others, was telling.
It wasn't the worst difference either - that belonged to the Cronulla Sharks. But where the Sharks recognised their flaws and corrected it by bringing in Dale Finucane and Cameron McInnes to work on their middle third defence, the Raiders appeared to stick their head in the sand.
The Raiders have already blown first half leads in two of their last three games, and haven't scored a single second half point in three weeks, in the same time conceding 49.
All told, in their six losses, the Raiders have lost second halves by a combined score of 94 points to 8.
This is hardly all Stuart's fault, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with the coach - particularly one who has been in a job as long as he has.
Stuart has been head coach of the club since 2014, spending over 200 matches in charge of the green machine, and things look to be going stale at a rate of knots. This is now a roster he has created, a team who have been moulded to play the way he wants them to play, and yet, he appeared a broken man in his press conference at the end of Saturday's loss to the New Zealand Warriors.
"Publicly I am lost for comment in regard of the quality of that performance in the second half and for any loyal fan and any real fan we have got left it, I feel really embarrassed and sorry for them," he said.
"That whole second half was undisciplined, lacked any quality or execution, it was just very disappointing.
"I am glad they were as bad as us."
Again, it's not all Stuart's fault. He isn't the one missing tackles, dropping the football and being generally disinterested in the game, but the Raiders' squad is his own doing.
The team appear to have only a handful of forwards up to first grade standard, which is again, a big part of the reason waiting for the return of Fogarty from injury isn't going to turn the green machine's fortunes around.
Josh Papalii will still be picked for State of Origin, and Tapine is playing excellently, but there are few others in the pack who are up to NRL standard week to week, while the backline is something of a rabble at times, with Stuart also seemingly unsure about who should be picked where from week to week.
A change of coach in the nation's capital might spark a short-term turnaround, but it won't be permanent with the roster they currently have.
Canberra have signed a grand total of zero players thus far for 2023, and while some youngsters in the system - Xavier Savage and Harry Rushton in particular - are showing promise, this is a team who have fallen from a grand final to wooden spoon contention inside three years.
It's embarrassing and the squad needs a full and complete cleanout, most likely under a new coach.
Driftwood must be case aside from their top 30. With things going from bad to worse, reserve options - all respect to them - don't fill fans with a great deal of hope they'd be able to spark a full-scale turnaround for the green machine.
The problem really is that the club's roster management looks poor. Only Adam Elliott, Matt Frawley, James Schiller and Sam Williams remain off-contract for 2023, with very little wriggle room given everyone else - apart from Josh Hodgson (Wests Tigers) and Ryan Sutton (Canterbury Bulldogs reportedly) - remains on-contract at the club.
It means room for a whole scale cleanout is virtually non-existent, but those spots will need to be used on players who can turn the club around.
Not necessarily stars, but in the same vein as Cronulla, hard-working forwards and professionals who will get the job done.
Without a working knowledge of the Raiders' salary cap, it's impossible to ascertain what resources they have left, however, some big-money contracts to the likes of Wighton, Nicoll-Klokstad, Papalii, the recently upgraded Tom Starling, Elliott Whitehead and Jarrod Croker - who could remain with the club until the end of 2024 - are sure to tie their hands in terms of competing for big names.
But again, it's not big names they need. The likes of hard-working, experienced options like Euan Aitken, Tom Opacic, Albert Kelly, Jake Turpin, Matthew Eisenhuth, Siosiua Taukeiaho, Andrew Fifita, Josh McGuire, Aiden Tolman, Jarrod Wallace, Ryan Matterson, Briton Nikora and Corey Oates remain off-contract for 2023.
The Raiders need an attitude reset as much as anything else, at both coaching level and throughout their squad.
Without it, the pain which is currently being experienced won't be going anywhere.
