Canberra captain Jarrod Croker hopes close mate Todd Carney gets a chance to finish his NRL career "on his terms" despite the Raiders board rejecting an approach to sign the controversial playmaker.
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The Raiders started their pre-season on Wednesday as they take the first steps towards erasing the disappointment of failing to make the finals this year.
Carney emerged as a potential recruit to bolster their halves, but the board took a stand for club culture and turned away the 31-year-old, who was sacked by the Raiders in 2008.
Carney, a Goulburn junior and a groomsman at Croker's wedding, has been trying to resurrect his NRL career, but has only managed to secure a deal to play in the Queensland Cup next year.
"As a mate of Todd's, I obviously want to see him back playing football and doing what he does best," Croker said.
"I just want to see him get the chance to go out on his terms, which is all he wants to do. It would have been nice to have him [in Canberra].
"But we've got three quality halves here and if we had a fourth, it would have been a bonus.
"As a mate of his, you want to see him back and you feel like he's served a lot of time and done his time, I guess. He's got a gig [in the Queensland Cup], so hopefully he gets an opportunity to keep going forward."
The bulk of the Raiders squad returned to the club's headquarters for an information session before beginning their gruelling fitness and football preparations on Thursday.
New recruits Charlie Gubb and Sam Williams joined the group for the first time, but the squad will do the majority of pre-season training without 10 players who are on World Cup duties.
Williams will compete with Blake Austin and Aidan Sezer for a spot in the halves, while Lachlan Croker has signed a one-year deal to join Manly.
There is also ongoing uncertainty surrounding the future of hooker Kurt Baptiste, who has been linked to a move to English Super League club Warrington.
The club is believed to be close to re-signing winger Nick Cotric and is in negotiations to extend Josh Hodgson's contract.
"I think every club is used to it at this time of year and it's a bit of a shame it's not all sorted out salary cap wise," Jarrod Croker said.
"I feel for Kurt and his partner Chloe. It can be tough when you don't know what's going on, so hopefully it's sorted out pretty soon."
The Raiders failed to fire last season, missing the finals despite being tipped a premiership contender at the start of the year.
Their inconsistency saw them drop to 10th on the ladder and they lost eight games by six points or less, including four of those in golden point.
"One thing we did have to do last year was jam a lot of work into a shorter period of time, we started training at the end of November," Croker said.
"This year we're back earlier, there's no All Stars or NRL nines and we're back three weeks earlier.
"We've got more time to work on things ... One of the things we need to work on is tight losses, we were on the wrong end of it a few times.
"This is a good time to work on that, making decisions under fatigue, which we'll be doing plenty of in the next couple of weeks. You don't want to dwell on last season, but you've got to work on the things you need to [fix]."
