The Country Bumpkins...
13 years after a meeting above "The Ideal Milk Bar" in Campsie created the Canterbury-Bankstown Junior Rugby League, football lovers of the working class south-west of Sydney finally got their own team in the New South Wales Rugby League premiership.
Canterbury's first grade side 1937
The year was 1935. Sydney was in the grip of the Great Depression and training was on McMahon's paddock near Belmore Station with car headlights an occasional luxury on dark nights.
But right from the start the men who laid the foundations for the Bulldogs thrived on adversity. It took the new club, nicknamed "Country Bumpkins" because of their rural recruiting & CB emblem, just 3 years to win their first premiership.
The grand final winning effort was repeated again in 1942 before a 25 year drought set in.
The Berries...
1967: The Defeat of St.George In 1967, having ended the 11 year premiership reign of the great St George by knocking them out in the final, "The Berries" as they were now known, went down to South Sydney in the grand final. But the return to the top end of the table set the scene for off-field restructuring that laid the foundations for the club to become one of the most consistent achievers in the remaining decades of the century.
The Bulldogs...
In 1978 Canterbury-Bankstown became known as "The Bulldogs". "Cantabs" "See Bees" & "Berries" were seen to be "soft" nicknames and the club wanted something to signify determination and grit.
A grand final appearance in 1979 followed by a grand final win in 1980 with a young, enthusiastic and free-running side dubbed "The Entertainers" was the beginning of a golden era that was to produce three more grand final wins in the 80's - 1984, 1985, and 1988.
Grand Finals
Three grand final appearances in the 90s produced one memorable premiership win in 1995, with the team not even expected to make the finals 8 weeks before winning the title.
In 2004 The Bulldogs beat the Roosters 16 to 13 to take out the 2004 Telstra Premiership. The Bulldogs go into 2005 as the reigning Premiers looking to make it back-to-back premiership wins.
The Bulldogs are proud of their history and of the famous spirit that it has helped create. But history is still being written and the Bulldogs New Breed of 2005 are working on the next chapter. ;-)
