When Jamal Fogarty walked out the door at Canberra for a long-term move to Manly ahead of the 2026 season, the Raiders didn't go looking for a marquee halfback.
There was no big-name recruit, no interstate raid, no experienced journeyman brought to steady the ship.
Instead, Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart handed the keys to the club's most important jersey to a 22-year-old with just four NRL games to his name.
Ethan Sanders had come through the Parramatta Eels pathway system before crossing to Canberra, spent the entire 2025 season as the understudy to Jamal Fogarty in reserve grade and was suddenly the Raiders' starting halfback come 2026, paired with the NRL's reigning Dally M Five-Eighth of the Year, Ethan Strange.
Between them, the new halves combination carried a combined resume of barely more than fifty NRL appearances.
For a club that had made the finals the year prior, it was a genuine leap of faith.
In the off-season, the Raiders signed Brisbane Broncos halfback Coby Black, creating the question: who would be the Raiders halfback?
Twenty-two rounds later, that gamble looks like it is paying off.
The season-long numbers tell a story of a young player whose fundamentals were already elite before he played ten first-grade games, and whose game-changing instincts have grown at almost exactly the rate you'd hope for in a rookie thrown into the deep end.
It's worth unpacking both halves of the story of Ethan Sanders in 2026 in detail, from statistics to the tactical and mental picture that sits behind him.
How did Sanders play before joining the Raiders?
Sanders grew up in Quakers Hill, west of Parramatta and came through the Eels' junior pathway from an early age.
A lifelong Eels fan, he idolised Mitchell Moses growing up and later trained alongside him directly, picking his kicking game apart in particular during their time together at the club.
His breakout representative season came in 2023; Sanders had already spent a year as an underage SG Ball player in 2022, holding his own and often excelling against opponents up to three years older, which was enough to mark him as a genuine prospect.
In 2023 he stepped up fully, captaining Parramatta in an SG Ball Grand Final win.
He was named both the Eels' SG Ball Player of the Year and Players' Player at the club's junior representative presentation, on top of taking out Player of the Match honours in the decider itself.
Across that Junior Representative season, he produced four tries, eight try assists, six line breaks, 31 tackle busts and kicked 32 goals as the halfback.
The kind of all-around statistical footprint that gets a young playmaker firmly onto an NRL club's radar.
That form carried straight into the NSW Under 19s State of Origin fixture later in June 2023, where Sanders was named at halfback for the NSW side.
Sanders scored a long-range try with a running style and technique similar to Moses, showing a kicking-heavy statistical profile with 323 kicking metres, five tackle busts and 79 running metres.
Sanders' kicking style had shades of Mitchell Moses and Cody Walker, able to switch between long-range kicks and the down-hill grounded kicks directed toward the sidelines and corners to keep his teammates engaged in a defensive-first mindset.
He rounded out that same season playing 12 Jersey Flegg games for Parramatta, helping the club reach the Preliminary Final.
Then in Round 8 of the 2024 season, Sanders made his debut, fittingly enough, against the Manly Sea Eagles, the same club he'd later beat with a golden-point field goal in his Canberra debut.
By that point, the secret was out that he had signed with the Raiders on a three-year deal starting in 2025.
First half of 2026 season
Sanders didn't ease into the job quietly. In just his fifth NRL appearance, on the road at Brookvale against the very team that signed his mentor, he slotted a match-winning 30-metre field goal in golden point.
The Raiders made a dire comeback from Manly's 14-0 lead to 28-14 before the Sea Eagles made a comeback of their own to tie the game before golden point.
Sanders landed the field goal to win the game after a tough contest against Manly. It's the kind of moment that can just as easily break a young halfback's confidence.
Ricky Stuart saw how his halfback handled the pressure and understood the expectations he had going into that game.
The Raiders would fall into a four-game losing streak before upsetting the South Sydney Rabbitohs in Perth.
When Canberra lost, the floor of Sanders' game held, but the ceiling disappeared.
His kicking metres remain consistent regardless of whether he wins or loses; the data suggest his tackle efficiency also stabilises.
However, the playmaking output did not deliver. In his first 10 games this season, Sanders had 5 try assists, averaged 62 receipts per game and ran 42 metres per game.
Getting used to the demands of playing NRL, on top of the rule changes, created a difficult start for the Raiders across the board.
In six of his losses this season, he produced either zero or one attacking stat (no line break, no assist, no involvement in a try).
Errors were creeping into his game. Across his losing performances, his handling error rate almost doubled compared to when he wins.
Sanders is not a player who looks like he is going to panic or force the issue when Canberra are behind.
If anything, the opposite. Doing the repeatable, drilled parts of his job at almost the same level regardless of context, and lacking the confidence to play instinctively, take risks, and manufacture something out of nothing, goes quiet.
That's a fair assessment for a young halfback finding his feet in the NRL, building trust in his own game.
Defensively, he struggled with the physicality against bigger forwards; after all, Sanders plays within himself rather than overextending when things go wrong.
In rounds 14 to 16, Sanders had his worst defensive performances, with the team enduring a difficult loss to the Melbourne Storm when Stuart changed the side Sanders was playing on from the left to the right.
Ethan Strange, a naturally left-sided runner and passer, had been shifted to the right edge at the start of the season specifically to free up Sanders' own preferred side of the field.
Then, Stuart changed Strange back to the side that he has so much success on.
What's changed for the Raiders halfback?
With the fundamentals locked in, Sanders has improved his game drastically with the ball in hand.
The error count has declined significantly, not coughing up possession as often in the first half of this season, averaging barely more than half an error per game.
What has grown is his influence on the scoreboard.
In his last ten games, Sanders has nearly tripled his try assists to 12, while averaging slightly more run metres per game with 46.
The most significant number in his last ten games is the number of touches Sanders had.
Sanders declined from 62 per game in his first 10 games this season to an average of 51 touches per game.
The 22-year-old has extended his kicking game in range and variety, with a more aggressive style compared to his conservative approach at the start of the season.
When his opening rounds consisted of a territory-focused kicking game, he has since grown in trust and confidence to attack field position more aggressively.
At the Raiders' best, Sanders plays side-to-side, and he has found ways in his kicking game to avoid pressure and lose time when aggressive defenders chase him on the last tackle.
From Round 17 onward, Sanders' playmaking saw significant wins against the Dragons, Bulldogs, Rabbitohs and the Wests Tigers.
The best performance of his season was against the Tigers, where the Canberra Raiders won 56-10, and Sanders had four try assists.
In the last three scoring sequences for the Raiders against the Tigers, Canberra established shape around the middle third of any spot they attacked from.
In the 68th minute, Daine Laurie scored his third try, and the play started on the fourth tackle.
Laurie, near the halfway mark of the field, got the ball square after receiving a pass from Jayden Brailey.
The utility ran a solid, sequence-friendly line with Morgan Smithies as the lead runner.
From there, Laurie threw out-the-back to Sanders, and the Tigers' defensive reads created an opening; Sione Fainu turned in, while Javon Andrews turned out wide, wary of Fainu.
That hesitation in the defensive line was exactly what Sanders needed, selling a show-and-go, dummying the pass and running straight through the gap the Tigers' own uncertainty had created.
What elevated the play from a clean linebreak into a try assist was the defenders now scrambling to recover, as Sanders kept his head up in the backfield, finding Laurie running the support line on the inside, and put him over untouched.
Two minutes later, deep in the red zone territory on the fifth tackle, Canberra worked through a similar shape but from a different angle.
Jayden Brailey scooped the ball off dummy-half and found Tom Starling on the left in the middle third as first receiver.
Starling shifted the ball out-the-back to Sanders, who then immediately assessed the Tigers' edge, identifying Javon Andrews and Patrick Herbert as the soft spot in the defensive line.
Working alongside Matthew Timoko, Sanders sold another dummy, this time baiting Junior Tupou into rushing in on the anticipation that the ball was heading to Strange.
Instead, Sanders threw an over-the-top cut-out pass to Jed Stuart, who scored untouched to make it 52-10.
It's a pass and a read Sanders didn't have the confidence to throw earlier in the season, which makes this moment as much a marker of growing self-belief as of skill.
The final try of the game showcased a different technical skill.
Starling ran straight and flat through the midfield, with Sanders cruising out the back at a controlled tempo, footwork clean and unhurried, before delivering an early, well-timed pass to Timoko, deliberately bypassing Strange in what often is called a tunnel ball, threading it past the first defender.
The quality and timing of that pass put Patrick Herbert in an impossible defensive position, shoulders square to the sideline with no time to reset, gifting Timoko space to run at him one-on-one.
Tupou was forced to scramble across as cover, but it was too late, with Timoko scoring the last try of the game to make it 56-10.
Tempo control was on display from Sanders, going from slow to fast, manipulating the defensive line with timing rather than raw pace, and reading the cues in front of him before committing to the pass is a specific skill that's clearly matured over the course of the season.
Canberra knew they had someone special with an incredibly bright future ahead of them.
Despite currently being contracted until the end of the 2027 season, the Raiders can build a future with a halfback whose game is built on elite kicking and genuine organisational responsibility seen in his very first game for the club.
Sanders has spent the year layering in exactly the kind of scoreboard influence and tactical maturity that separates a solid NRL number seven from a genuine long-term first-choice halfback.
The next step for him is to evolve his kicking game in the red zone area creating try-scoring opportunities.
If the second half of the season is any indication of where his game is heading, the rest of the competition should be paying close attention.
