Canterbury Bankstown Retro
August 31st 2009 01:33
Canterbury-Bankstown Retro
Last week the Sydney newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, called for the long-established teams of the NRL to revert back to their original names and to be again identified by their traditional areas. It called for the Sydney Roosters to once again be known as Eastern Suburbs and for the Sharks and Sea-Eagles to use their extended names of Cronulla-Sutherland and Manly-Warringah.
Out of the mentioned clubs however, it was the Bulldogs that have answered the call. From next season, the club will revert back to their traditions and be once again known as the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
Canterbury-Bankstown has a long and illustrious history in first grade rugby league. The club entered the NSWRL Premiership in 1935 despite fierce opposition from nearby district Western Suburbs and have stayed in the top league ever since. Their first season was less than spectacular. Training on an old cow pasture, the club withstood two vicious rounds in May when they were beaten 91-6 by St. George, and then 87-7 by Eastern Suburbs, the two biggest defeats in the history of the NRL. Fortunately, they managed to avoid the wooden spoon by downing the hapless Sydney University twice in the season.
Known as the ‘Berries’ long before they became the Bulldogs, Canterbury-Bankstown quickly found success when they took the 1938 Premiership in only their fourth season. Not only that, the Berries defeated the rampaging Eastern Suburbs Tricolours who had won the NSWRL Premiership for the previous three seasons, and at one point stood undefeated for 36 consecutive months.
Halting the dynasty of a great club was something that Canterbury-Bankstown would repeat again at various stages of their history. The next time they did it was in 1967 when they defeated the St. George Dragons in the preliminary final. Up until that point the Dragons had won an unprecedented 11 NSWRL Premierships in a row, a world record in any code of football. The feat was so unbelievable that Canterbury-Bankstown’s captain-coach, Kevin Ryan, even told a member of the press after the game, ‘I don’t like seeing them go down.’ Unfortunately for the Berries, they went on to lose to South Sydney in the Grand Final 12-10.
It was in the 1980s that Canterbury-Bankstown went on to create a dynasty of their own. Now known as the Bulldogs, they won the premiership in 1980, their first since 1942, and went on to win another three during the decade, while enjoying a fierce and now famous rivalry with the Parramatta Eels. Of all the grand finals during the 1980s, Canterbury-Bankstown featured in six of them, only going down twice.
In the years that followed, the Bulldogs did not quite reach the heights of the 1980s, but were still formidable taking out the 1995 and 2004 premierships, and competing in the grand finals of 1994 and ’98.
Of all their years in the competition, the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs have won eight premierships, the fifth most overall, finished runners-up eight times and have taken the minor premiership on six occasions. In 2009 the Dogs again look set to rewrite history as they push for their ninth premiership.
It was in 1995 that Canterbury-Bankstown chose to alter their name to become the Sydney
Bulldogs and later to just the Bulldogs alone. In that time the Bulldogs have had to battle through some rough periods where the club’s image has been tarnished. Allegations of inappropriate off-field behaviour and gang-rapes along with displays of player disloyalty and repeated crowd disturbances have battered the image of the proud club.
While in 2002 the Bulldogs suffered their greatest heartbreak of all when they were found to have blatantly breached the salary cap. Up until that point the Bulldogs had been leading the competition by far, bolstered by a 17-match winning streak and looked set to take out another premiership. That was until the revelation of the salary cap breach came to light, and they were stripped of all their competition points and ended the season by finishing dead last.
The next time the Bulldogs were to finish last was during last year’s season during which they turned in some woeful performances. Enter CEO Tod Greenburg and coach Kevin Moore, along with a multitude of new recruits. The transformation of the Bulldogs in only one season has been incredible and the rare occurrence that the club could go from last to first in one season is a strong possibility.
Not only has the on-field performances improved by leaps and bounds, but so has the club culture and respect. The performance of the Bulldogs on and off the field this season has been the envy of all other clubs, in which most will undoubtedly attempt to replicate next season, especially those that will miss the finals in 2009. The decision by the club to revert back to its roots and once again be named the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs will only add to this.
Moreover, the Bulldogs have also submitted an application for funding to the State and Federal governments to redevelop their traditional home at the Belmore Sports Ground. Another effort by the Bulldogs to acknowledge their past and more importantly to make a statement that the Bulldogs have no plans to leave the Canterbury-Bankstown area in the foreseeable future. It seems that the talk of relocation within the Bulldogs club has become all but nonexistent as the club appears to be cementing their presence as a dominant
Sydney rugby league force.
BULLDOGS TRIVIA
Unbeknown to most Bulldogs fans is the fact that between 1943- 46 the team went without their traditional colours of blue and white, and instead they wore a maroon jersey with a blue “V”. The reason was because of rationing restrictions during World War II.
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