Canberra Raiders

Inaugural season: 1981

Home field: GIO Stadium, Canberra, Australia

Owner: Canberra District Rugby League Football Club Ltd.

Team colors: Lime green, blue, white, and gold

Overview

The Canberra Raiders are a professional rugby team that plays in Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL). The franchise was established in 1981 in the nation’s capital of Canberra and was one of the first teams from outside the Sydney area to be admitted to Australia’s premier rugby league. The team enjoyed a successful first decade and a half in the league, winning three premierships and finishing as the runner up twice more. One of those championships—the 1989 grand final against the Balmain Tigers—is considered to be one of the greatest grand final games ever played. Canberra has endured a series of up-and-down seasons in the twenty-first century, alternating between making the NRL final series and missing out on the postseason. Although the Raiders returned to the grand final in 2019, they fell short of winning another premiership.

History

Rugby evolved in the nineteenth century from football, a sport better known as soccer in North America. The sport gets its name from its birthplace, the Rugby School in Warwickshire, England. Rugby is a more hard-hitting form of football in which players are allowed to use their hands to advance the ball and tackle their opponents. Rugby became popular in England and soon spread to other parts of the British Empire. British military personnel are often credited with introducing the sport to the colony of Australia. Throughout the late-nineteenth century, Australian rugby was played by amateur teams. Then, in 1908, players in Australia banded together to form their own professional organization, the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL). The NSWRL consisted of Sydney-based teams and became the nation’s top-ranked professional league.

The NSWRL remained anchored in Australia’s largest city until the early 1980s, when the league began a period of expansion. In 1981, the league added two new teams to begin play in the 1982 season. The Illawarra Steelers were based in Wollongong, a city about 40 miles (63.4 kilometers) south of Sydney. The other expansion team was the Canberra Raiders, which was located in the Australian Capital Territory, about 150 miles (242 kilometers) southwest of Sydney. This made the Raiders the first NSWRL team based outside the state of New South Wales.

As its primary logo, the team adopted a helmeted Viking warrior. The original logo design was submitted by a local resident as part of a contest; however, the frowning Viking was often criticized for looking sad rather than intimidating. In 2000, the Raiders’ logo was overhauled and given a streamlined look with a more aggressive demeanor. From the start, the team wanted its uniforms to stand out among the other NSWRL franchises, so it adopted lime green as its primary color. The Raiders’ supporting colors included blue and gold, which are the colors of the Australian Capital Territory flag.

The Raiders did not begin their tenure in the NSWRL successfully, winning only four of twenty-six games in the 1982 season. Canberra’s record earned them the wooden spoon award, an “honor” given to the last-place team in the league. The Raiders posted their first winning season in 1984, going 13–11 and making the finals series—a playoff tournament for the regular season’s top teams. After a few more down years, Canberra stormed into the finals series in 1987 and advanced all the way to the grand final—the NSWRL’s championship game—where they lost to the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles.

In 1989, Canberra finished the regular season with a 14–8 record and rolled through the finals series to face the Balmain Tigers in the grand final. The Tigers jumped out to an early lead and looked to put the Raiders away as the contest wore on. However, Canberra gutted it out and twice just barely prevented Balmain from scoring to put the game out of reach. The Raiders eventually tied the game to send it into extra time. After a goal kick put Canberra ahead, the Raiders’ Steve Jackson, who came off the bench in extra time, fought through three defenders to make a desperate one-handed try to seal the victory. In rugby, a try is scored when a player places the ball on the ground in the opponent’s goal area. A goal kick occurs when a player drop kicks the ball through the goalposts and over the crossbar.

The 1989 game is often considered to be the greatest grand final in Australian rugby history. It also marked the first time that a team from outside Sydney won the NSWRL premiership. Canberra did not wait long to win its second title, rolling through the 1990 season and capturing its second premiership with a win over the Penrith Panthers. The two teams met again in the 1991 grand final with Penrith getting revenge against the Raiders in that matchup. After financial difficulties forced the team to cut salaries in 1992, the Raiders slipped to the back of the pack. The team regrouped in 1993 and advanced to another grand final in 1994, winning their third title with a dominant 36–12 victory over the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.

The mid-1990s was a period of upheaval and change in Australian rugby as an attempt to expand the league to a nationwide audience resulted in the formation of two rival organizations. The Australian Rugby League (ARL) replaced the NSWRL, while the corporate-backed Super League emerged to challenge the ARL. In 1997, Canberra jumped ship to the Super League and played there for its one season of existence. From a financial standpoint, the 1997 season proved that Australia was unable to accommodate two major rugby leagues, so the ARL and the Super League merged in 1998 and reformed as the National Rugby League (NRL).

By the start of the 2000s, Canberra’s championship squads of the 1990s began to disband, and the franchise struggled to recapture its past successes. The team seemed to alternate between good and bad periods but was never able to crack the top spots in the league standings. The Raiders struggled for much of the 2010s, making the finals series just once from 2013 to 2018. Then, in 2019, Canberra made a surprising run to the grand final before losing the championship to the Sydney Roosters. Canberra finished the 2020 season in fifth place. The team then went on to defeat Cronulla-Sutherland and the Sydney Roosters but lost in the preliminary final to Melbourne. Canberra did not live up to expectations in 2021, losing seven games in a row, finishing in tenth place. Their losing streak continued in the beginning of 2022; however the team managed to finish in eighth place. They were defeated by Parramatta in week two of the finals.

The Raiders are owned by a corporate group known as the Canberra District Rugby League Football Club Ltd. The team plays its home games at GIO Stadium, a 25,000-seat facility in the nation’s capital.

Notable players

Australian rugby great Mal Meninga joined the Raiders in 1986 and played with the team until 1994. Known as “Big Mal,” Meninga used his imposing size to punish opposing players. He was part of Canberra’s three premiership-winning teams and made a key tackle in the 1989 grand final to keep the game within reach. Meninga finished his career with 291 tries—74 with the Raiders—and was named one of Australian rugby’s Immortals in 2018. Only thirteen members of the Australian Rugby League Hall of Fame have achieved the title of Immortal as of 2024.

Hall of famer Glenn Lazarus began his career with Canberra in 1987 before getting caught up in the team’s salary woes in 1992. Laurie Daley also began his career with the Raiders in 1987 and went on to win the 1995 Dally M Player of the Year, an award presented to the most outstanding player in the regular season. He was also named the 1997 Super League Player of the Year in the league’s only year of existence. Daley scored 87 tries over the course of his career before retiring in 2000. He was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2008. Ricky Stuart played with the Raiders from 1988–1998 and won the Dally M award in 1993. He was awarded the Clive Churchill Medal in the team’s 1990 grand final victory as the game’s most outstanding player. Stuart entered the Hall of Fame in 2018.

Hall of famer Bradley Clyde played for Canberra from 1988–1998 and won two Clive Churchill Medals for the 1989 and 1991 grand finals. He is the only player in history to win the award twice. Ruben Wiki was a member of the Raiders from 1993–2004 and elected to the Hall of Fame in 2019. Jason Croker is second in club history with 120 tries over the course of his sixteen-year career with Canberra. He entered the league in 1991 and was part of the Raiders’ 1994 premiership-winning squad. Jarrod Croker, who is a distant relation to Jason, started his career with Canberra in 2009 and remained a club leader into the early 2020s. Croker retired at the end of the 2023 season.

Bibliography

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Griffiths, Ellie. “A Brief History of Australia’s National Rugby League.” Culture Trip, 14 Dec. 2016, theculturetrip.com/pacific/australia/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-national-rugby-league-australia/. Accessed 20 Mar. 2024.

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Headon, David. Absolutely Bleeding Green: The Raiders Story. Allen & Unwin, 2020.

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