BY MAX, AGE 8

The Raiders Fan Day at Raiders Belconnen this year was great. When my family and I got there at about 11.00am there was already a queue for the signing session. Lots of members had come to see the team.

I’m pretty lucky because I live in Belconnen and my mum and dad take me to nearly all the home games, I’ve been to the school holiday clinics and I even get to bump into some of the players at the shops. Josh Hodgson, Charnze and Jack Wighton are the ones I see the most and they’re always nice to me. Josh Hodgson is my favourite.

I spoke to Josh Hodgson at the signing session today and he asked me how my Christmas was and I told him about how Santa brought me an electric scooter for Christmas, a bit like Elliott Whitehead’s one.

Last year I wrote letters to the team and they read them out (link below). https://www.raiders.com.au/news/2019/07/10/messages-from-max/

At the fan day I spoke to some of them about my letters. Corey Horsburgh said he’s still got my letter and he was really happy that I liked seeing him get Sam Burgess angry.

We had a talk with Harley Smith-Shields. I’m excited about him because he won Jersey Flegg player of the year last year and he played his junior footy with the North Canberra Bears, the same club I play for, and so does my little sister and brother.  Harley’s cousin plays in my team. Harley had to leave the Bears to go to the Gungahlin Bulls because his team didn’t have enough players (but he’s really a Bear, not a Bull).  I’ll keep playing for the Bears too. 

My little sister Rose, really wanted a photo with Charnze, which made Josh Papalii a bit sad, so I told him I wanted a photo with him, definitely. 

My dad spoke to Jack Wighton and said thanks for doing the signing session. Jack said “Hopefully we keep winning for you guys. It’s better to be busy like this at a signing session than have nobody show up, which happened for a while there.” My sister had a photo with him. 

It was a great day and I’m sure the Raiders will have a great year in 2020.