BY ROB

It’s happening again. After an amazing win over the Storm in week 1 of the finals Green Machine fever is sweeping not just the ACT but the entire nation in general.

Locally we’ve got green bread, green snags and local businesses sporting Raiders bunting (shoutout to Mineshaft in Civic! – if you see other businesses sporting Raiders lime let us know!). Sue Washington (who every Raiders fan should get around) has a flippin’ Raiders car!

At a broader level respectable publishers such as the Betoota Advocate are getting behind the “Milk” as they quickly firm as everyone’s smoky dark horse underdog.

From a historical angle the clock has come back round – it’s either 30 years since the Raiders inaugural premiership and the Greatest Grand Final of All Time, or 25 years since one of the strongest rugby league team ever assembled took out the 1994 premiership.

The culture around the club has solidified, both in the 17 on game day and the wider fan base. The Viking clap, at first a novelty to boost crowd enthusiasm is now pretty much a milestone of every round that features heavily in NRL promos.

The Raiders have seen one of the stronger fan driven digital ecosystems rise up around them, from these humble pages to Bourkey’s Top 10, the Green Machine podcast, the Raiders Review Podcast), and of course the OGs of it all, the Greenhouse. testament to the reasonably close knit nature of the club and community. We’ve even got the best graphic designers around in Sezer’s Palace and Tyson Bennett telling the story of the green for love rather than money. Not to mention the wonderful and crazy people of Raiders social media, like the We Bleed Green crew, or Raiders twitter.

Sidebar: We won’t list all the people who hat we love on social media just because the article will be too long. Safe to say we love the damn lot of you.

It’s a good thing we have these small indie content makers. Often they are of the best place to actually understand the Raiders and how they got to where they are right now. Some of the mainstream media routinely mix our players up, or write pieces so totally off the mark that you can only imagine they’ve skimmed the Raiders wiki entry before hammering on the keyboard (Richard Hinds legitimately thinks the average Raiders fan is a 40 year old guy in a Video Ezy jersey).

Many of us will have our eyes locked on Friday’s sudden death Match between Souths and Manly. After that it’ll be a mad online dash to secure tickets to the biggest sporting event in ‘the Can’ this year.

25000 people packed into Canberra Stadium, most of them with their hands raised to the skies in anticipation of the beat that could drive the Raiders into their first Grand Final in 25 years.

Go the Green Machine!

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