As the final siren sounded on Sunday afternoon a crowd of Bulldogs supporters stormed onto the field to lift their local hero off the ground.
The game was club stalwart Josh Reynolds’ last appearance at Belmore Oval before departing for the Wests Tigers in 2018.
I didn’t think tales like these existed anymore. Like Parramatta premierships they always appeared to be dead and buried in the nostalgia of the 1980s.
The story had all the ingredients of a fairy-tale. The setting was the spiritual home of the Canterbury-Bankstown Rugby League Club, a place synonymous with names like Steve Mortimer and Terry Lamb.
The main character was Josh Reynolds, a local junior who attended primary school a stone’s throw away from the ground. He had been shown the door by the club he had first represented at age 14, before rising through the junior ranks to play 133 first-grade games, including two grand-finals.
A miracle comeback victory provided a fitting conclusion to the script and was well-deserved for the Belmore faithful who had come out in droves to say goodbye to one of their own.
Reynolds’ story comes at a time in which the local identity of rugby league clubs have never been under more threat. Suburban grounds appear to be headed to the grave as teams set up bases at neutral grounds located miles away from their local principalities.
Home ground advantage means nothing at these places as television crews do their best to hide the mass array of empty seats.
Yet on a sleepy afternoon in suburbia a bunch of passionate supports showed that clubs are still fuelled by the tribal support of their local communities.
Don’t tell these fans Reynolds never won a grand final. He is simply one of them, a local kid whose boyhood dreams of representing the local area became a reality.
Todd Greenberg, take note.
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