Canberra: A Love Again Story

Matt Cleary is a Raiders fan and has been since 1982. There's been heady peaks and disillusioned troughs and a period he didn't watch footy at all. This is one man's journey of Fandom in Green.

Canberra, unlike Queensland, Sydney's northern beaches or the Pope's place at Vatican City, is not referred to as God’s Country.

But growing up in Canberra was, to court vernacular of the day, grouse, even ace.

It was suburbia in the bush. It was tooling around on a BMX or on your 10-speed Malvern Star on the purpose-built paths that weave around the place.

It was safe, easy to get around. It was full of sports fields and golf courses. It was two hours to snow or beach.

Cold? Sure, for three months. Solid winter. But you didn’t know any better. Didn’t everyone run about on frost?

Sporty town. Circa 1980 you could see David Campese and Mick O’Connor in the local rugby comp.

David Campese (right) celebrates Queanbeyan Whites’ fourth grade premiership in 1979.

Mate of the old man's played against Campese and said it was hard to tackle him because the bottom half of him was going one way, the top half the other.

Tell us that descriptor didn’t stick with a sports-mad kid with a thing for creative writing.

Johnny Warren was coach of Canberra City. They had a couple old Scotsman played for Liverpool and a little striker called Ivan Gruicic. Frank Farina came to the AIS as a boy, played for the Arrows.

Aussie rules, pre-Raiders, was the biggest game in town on the back of a rotund full-forward called Kevin “Cowboy” Neale who played for Ainslie after kicking a thousand goals for St Kilda.

Didn’t move much, Cowboy. Didn’t have to. Body like a beer keg and Sergeant Schultz’s moustache, he stood in the goal square and took strong pack marks, and drilled drop punts through the sticks that we flew on each other to mark.

The ACTAFL courted South Melbourne Swans but they went to Sydney and rugby league brought big city footy to town.

And the Raiders became Canberra’s team.

From ’82 on you’d go out to Seiffert Oval in Queanbeyan to watch them get flogged. But they were forgiven because they were new and the other teams were from Sydney where everything was bigger and better.

And there on the little hills you’d yell “get ‘em onside!” and “second row!” in scrums that were contests with the shape and aesthetics of dockyard brawls. 

And they were your team. Your people. You could see Terry Fahey and Ron Giteau drinking a schooner in the Mawson Hotel. Terry Fahey! Ronnie Giteau! Is that … could it it be? … It is! It’s Angel Marina!

And then big Mal Meninga came to town and carried the club on his big broad back. And he was a beautiful thing. A real presence. People looked at him in the streets.

Presence and accounted for: Mal Meninga. Pic: NRL.com

I was out there at Seiffert in the wet when he banged his arm on the post, sliding in to tackle Manly’s Darrell Williams. He broke it three more times and his arm guard grew ever fatter until it was effectively like an SS Jumbo cricket bat taped to his arm. And he’d use it like a bull bar on a roo-shooting ute, and once as a club on Mick O’Connor’s shnoz.

And the Green Machine was similarly bad and mean, the fearsome men from the ACT, and we sang that jingle long into the night in ’89 and Ricky Stuart did a little jig on the dance-floor of Illusions, the odd little discotheque where you’d pash off with girls and a posh drink was Southern Comfort and Coke.

Turn 21 and only your footy club’s penchant for fun-running rugby and play-drinking tours of New Orleans, San Isidro and Sydney could hold you in the joint. But that was enough, such was the fun of club footy, and touring, and tooling about.

And following the great Canberra Raiders.

I was in Canberra few years ago when former winger Paul Martin blew the big bastard horn. He used to do bombs off top tower at Civic Pool in his little footy shorts. He wore a thin leather choker necklace, might’ve had a shark’s tooth on it, and he thought he was pretty cool, Paul Martin. And he was. In that context, winger in rugby league’s greatest-ever grand final, he was flat-out Fonzie.

And the Raiders knew a dynasty. And I was leaping about in ’94 when they flogged the Dogs, and rugby league was the only game in town.

Then Super League turned up and I don’t reckon I watched a game of rugby league for eight years.

Few reasons: the Super League war was greedy and dumb, a distance-pissing contest by media behemoths for ad sales on television; Canberra changed their jumper; Stuart and Brad Clyde went to Canterbury; Steve Walters went to Townsville; Laurie Daley limped into retirement.

Good times in ‘94. Peak Raiders. Peak rugby league. Pic: NRL.com

Meanwhile, ACT rugby, long the third province and whipping boy, flogged the Waratahs in ’94 before Joe Roff, George Gregan, Rod Kafer and Stephen Larkham – our boys! Locals! - joined the cast-offs from Randwick, and the ACT Brumbies played an entertaining brand of rugby Randwick and Royals had been ripping for years. It was called “running rugby”.

And as league went south, rugby went north.

Then I went to London where there is effectively no rugby league and I didn’t give a stuff. Stuff the Raiders, stuff rugby league. I saw Arsenal and Man U at Wembley. I saw Australia win the Rugby World Cup at Millennium Stadium and Australia win the Cricket World Cup at Lord’s. I saw a bullfight in Seville. I had sex on a train in Prague.

But I came back. And slowly, glacially slowly, came back to fandom for the Green Machine. And from about 2013, effectively with The Return of Ricky, Canberra has been my team again. I’ve cared.

(Be good get back to Prague again, of course.)

It’s helped that they’ve been entertaining, even compelling, funsters and weirdos. They’ve blown teams away and been blown away.

In 2016 they scored ridiculous tries from everywhere. They were a flat-out hoot. Joey Leilua (have a go at his highlights; he’s like Athletic Big Mal) hit Jordan Rapana with a pass at Leichhardt that Benji Marshall would’ve been proud to pluck from his bottom.

Ricky wore his bleeding heart on his sleeve. Local and hero. And with Ricky coming home, locals came back and backed the machine.

And, the odd catastrophe in Bathurst (let us never talk of it again) aside, they’ve been a hoot.

There is a massive horn and the clap, and so many Poms it’s like Hull's on holiday.

The Poms try things in attack and rip in in defence. It’s as if growing up on frozen fields instills hardness as normal. Like playing footy on frost – it takes a certain madness.

John Bateman was my favourite. Like Ellery Hanley he was a back-rower with an odd gait who did odd, angular, unexpected things.

Today it’s Rapana. My man! But there’s been others. At various time it’s Josh Hodgson, Jack Wighton, Josh Papalii, Elliott Whitehead, Jarrod Croker and the revelation at fullback that is Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad. I'd be leaving out a few. Hudson Young! Kid Loco! Loving what he’s bringing to the party and glad he’s got most of the mad shit out of his game, that could ruin a man.

John Bateman. Miss the mad bastard. Pic: NRL.com

Yes, it’s a bummer that Bateman went home and George Williams with him. Bummer that Leilua is a Tiger and Aiden Sezar is in Huddersfield. I still miss Blake Austin.

But grief is the price we pay for love. The Queen said that, bless the old bit of kit, and she also said you cannot keep all of ‘em. For that, as they say, like daily rule changes, is greatest game of all rugby league in these modern times.

Yet it’s credit to Stuart, Don Furner and the suits at Raiders Inc. that the squadron has largely been the same the last few years. It’s largely the one that in 2019 topped everyone bar the hard-bastard Chooks. The one which in 2020 made the preliminary final. And the one which this year had everything go wrong that could, let us put it behind us with Bathurst.

Regardless, they remain our people, these Green Machinists. We like ‘em as the Brookie Hill tribe does the Turbos, as the Chooks love Luke Keary, as the Panther people love their crazy kids.

They're great, Canberra Raiders. Even grouse.