Season 2016 has been one hell of a year for the Canberra Raiders – just ask CEO Don Furner. The boss has also admitted that luck has played a part in picking up mid-season recruits and the team that will run out for Saturday night’s preliminary final against Melbourne.

“They’re all different, they all have different stories about how they got here,” Furner told AAP.

“Some of it’s by planning and some of it’s by luck. It’s a bit of both.

“We didn’t know we were going to get Joe Tapine at the start of the year, we didn’t know the whole Parramatta thing was going to blow up and Junior Paulo got squeezed out.

“That wasn’t planning – we were just in a position to take advantage of that.”

The club also pulled lethal backs combination Joey Leilua and Jordan Rapana from the scrap heap and signed halves combination from Blake Austin and Aidan Sezer from Wests and Gold Coast respectively.