As the NRL finals kick into gear this month, we take a look at one of the toughest and most controversial, both on and off the field, rugby league legends to ever play the game. There was only one TOMMY RAUDONIKIS…
There have been few more tenacious players in the game of rugby league than Tom Raudonikis. An inspirational captain who often took on players twice his size, his whole-hearted attitude on the playing field earned him the name “Tom Terrific” in the 1970s. Tommy played 201 games for the Western Suburbs Magpies during the decade, as well as winning the Rothman’s Medal (rugby league’s highest player honour at the time) for Best and Fairest Player of the 1972 season. Raudonikis went on to play 29 Tests, including nine World Cup appearances, during his international career, but his efforts for the New South Wales Blues and at club level were equally inspirational. Extremely competitive, both on and off the field, Raudonikis regularly delivered the goods when called upon to produce that “something extra”.
In 1995, he returned to Sydney as coach of the Magpies after a long career in Brisbane. In only his second year as coach of the club, Tommy led Wests back into the play-offs in the 20-team ARL competition. The following year he coached the NSW Blues to State of Origin success. This edited extract from new book TOMMY, The Extraordinary Career of Tom Raudonikis, by Ian Collis & Alan Whiticker gives an insight into the man, the myth and the master.
“Cattle Dog”
The decision to appoint Tommy as coach of Wests in 1995 was not so much a strategic masterstroke by the cash-strapped club as the universe having a good wink at us; there was no better person to take charge of the proud foundation club for what would be their final years as a standalone club. The Magpies had made the semi-finals for two seasons (1991 and 1993) under Warren Ryan, but the club was on the downward slide when Tommy took over from caretaker coach Wayne Ellis at the end of the troubled 1994 season.
There were enough good players at Wests to remain competitive — 1986 Kangaroo Paul Langmack, former rugby international Andrew Leeds, hooker ‘Cherry’ Mescia, hardworking halfback Steve Georgallis and the McGuinness brothers, Ken and Kevin. Tommy even brought down his teenage son Lincoln, a Byron Bay junior, to play for the club and he would make 24 first-grade appearances in the 1998 and 1999 seasons. Raudonikis improved on his first season results (thirteenth of 20 teams in the ARL competition) to take his underrated team to the quarter-finals in 1996 at the height of the Super League war.
The undoubted highlight of Tommy’s five seasons at Wests (and there would be many lowlights), was the Magpies’ last-minute 23–22 win over Norths at Campbelltown in August 1996. With a final-eight finish very much in the offing, Wests five-eighth Andrew Willis broke a 22–all deadlock with a field goal from halfway. The crowd of 13,186 cheered like the old days, while Tommy got so excited he almost jumped out of the coach’s box. Standing behind him was his old mate, John Singleton. Wests qualified for the play-offs, but the fairytale ended soon after when they were knocked out of the finals by Cronulla, 20–12.
The ensuing years would not be so kind at club level, but Tommy’s success that year helped him land his dream job — coach of NSW’s State of Origin team. Paul Vautin had coached Queensland to a memorable State of Origin victory in 1995, utilising the now famous “Queenslander!” rallying cry as a motivational tactic for his inexperienced team. When Raudonikis took over as NSW coach in 1997, he hatched a plan that hopefully would rattle the opposition in the opening match of the series at Lang Park. It was straight out of the Tommy playbook — at the given moment, someone would call out “cattle dog!” and his players were to start a brawl.
All the NSW players were on board, but when the “cattle dog!” call came at the first scrum in the 10th minute of the match, a serious flaw in the plan was quickly revealed. Andrew Johns, who was playing hooker that day, couldn’t fight. During the wild melee started by NSW prop Mark Carroll, Maroons hooker Jamie Goddard felled Johns, who left the field and required 27 stitches in a mouth wound. NSW won the match narrowly, 8 – 6, however, and went on to secure the 1997 Origin series in Melbourne in the next match.
Tommy retained the NSW coaching role in the newly formed NRL competition for 1998, but the Wayne Bennett-coached Maroons bounced back to win the Origin series, 2 – 1. “I was quite successful,” Tommy later reflected, “but the head blokes at Wests said if I went for it again that I wouldn’t have got it. They wanted me to concentrate fully on Western Suburbs, which I ended up doing. But we came last anyway.” Wests’ final two seasons in the NRL competition hastened their eventual demise as a standalone club.
In 1998, the Magpies finished equal last in the 20-team competition with just four wins but were handed the wooden spoon by the Gold Coast Chargers because of an inferior for-and-against record. In 1999, their record was even worse: outright last with just three wins. “I made some bad mistakes in the final couple of years and one of them was listening to other people rather than backing my own judgement,” he later admitted. “The press gave it to me and we finished with the wooden spoon again. It was tough — we struggled through the year with the merger with Balmain hanging over us.”
Even in the darkest moments, Raudonikis could find the light side, searching for that competitive edge that would pull the club out of the doldrums. “We were going dreadful and there was a shovel [in the dressing room],” Tommy later recalled. “How it got in there in our dressing room I don’t know. Andrew Leeds didn’t play that day and asked if I wanted it taken out. I said, ‘No. Just leave it there. I might need that’. At half-time we were going awful and when they came in, I smashed up the windows in our rooms. The CEO wanted me to pay for the damage but there was no way I was doing that. At presentation night they gave me a big photo… it was me dressed as Braveheart with a blue face and a shovel. All the boys saw the funny side of it.”
Perhaps having Tommy at the helm when the axe fell on the Wests club at the end of 1999, forced into a shotgun marriage with Balmain to form the Wests Tigers, made the decision a little more palpable for the army of Magpies fans. Either way, the end of the century drew a line through Tommy’s extraordinary career in rugby league.
Illness
After his playing days finished, Tommy almost appeared indestructible as he battled testicular cancer, underwent a quadruple bypass and then fought throat and neck cancer. He also faced financial problems and had to overcome personal tragedy. In 2013, his 15-year-old grandson Jake was killed during a rugby league match at Toormina, near Coffs Harbour. In 2017, Raudonikis’ eldest son Simon succumbed to cancer, aged 41. Tommy was first diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1986.
Rather than hide his treatment, Tommy spoke to his old coach Roy Masters, now a successful sports journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, to get the story out to as many men as possible to have regular health check-ups. In 2006, the time of Raudonikis’ heart surgery, Masters poignantly wrote, “Who could believe the very object that identified him would give him his biggest problem. At least the doctors will have plenty to work with.”
In recent years, in between constant treatment for throat and neck cancer, Tommy was invited into the NSW inner circle by Blues coach Brad Fittler. The game had changed but Raudonikis hadn’t. He mesmerised a new generation of champions with his stories of hate, passion and taking pride in the Blues jersey. Each year, Tommy would lead the “call to arms” for the Blues team and their supporters in the battle against Queensland. In 2019, he handed teenage NSW halfback Nathan Cleary his first Blues jersey. The circle had been closed, from one generation to the next.
When the end finally came, days before his 71st birthday in April 2021, Tommy’s passing was met by an outpouring of respect, emotion and, yes, love. Here was a man who lived his life as he played the game — uncompromisingly, with no excuse for defeat. The Prime Minister and NSW Premier praised him; journalists around the country lauded him and rugby league fans remembered a bygone era where players like Tommy Raudonikis played the game without fear or favour.
At Tommy’s public farewell at the SCG later that month, his former Wests and Kangaroos teammate John Dorahy told the assembled crowd of dignitaries, sporting greats and ordinary fans, “I can see him up there talking with Ned [Noel Kelly], talking with Keith Holman and talking with Dallas [John Donnelly] making Lidcombe Oval the place to be in heaven… Tommy was an inspirational captain and great halfback. He made a difference to people — many of which he had never met.” ■
About The Authors
Ian Collis is a well-known rugby league historian, who he has one of the largest collections of sporting memorabilia in Australia and is currently the Head of Fox Sports Statistics. Alan James Whiticker is an Australian non-fiction author and publisher, with over 30 published books on history, sport, biography, true crime and lifestyle.
TOMMY, THE EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF TOM RAUDONIKIS by Ian Collis & Alan Whiticker (New Holland Publishers, $40.00rrp) is available from all good book retailers or online at www.newhollandpublishers.com
By Ian Collis & Alan Whiticker
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