The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs are an Australian professional rugby league football team headquartered in Belmore, a Sydney suburb. They participate in the NRL Telstra Premiership, as well as competitions run by the New South Wales Rugby League, such as the Canterbury Cup NSW, the Jersey Flegg Cup, the Harvey Norman Women’s Premiership, the Tarsha Gale Cup, the S. G. Ball Cup and the Harold Matthews Cup.
In 1935, the club was admitted to the New South Wales Rugby Football League Premiership, which preceded the present NRL tournament. They won their first premiership in their fourth year of play, followed by another shortly after, and after spending the 1950s and most of the 1960s on the bottom rung, they had a very good decade in the 1980s, winning four premierships.
Known briefly as the Sydney Bulldogs in the 1990s, the club competed in the Super League war in 1997 before changing their name to the geographically indistinct Bulldogs and continuing to play every season of the re-unified NRL, winning their most recent premiership in 2004. Canterbury won the minor premiership in 2012, but were defeated 14-4 by the Melbourne Storm in the grand final. In 2014, they advanced from seventh to the grand final against South Sydney, but lost 30-6.[2] They are popularly known as Canterbury, the Bulldogs, or just the Dogs.
In 1935, thirteen years after a meeting above “The Ideal Milk Bar” in Campsie resulted in the formation of the Canterbury-Bankstown Junior Rugby League, the Canterbury club was admitted to the top New South Wales Rugby Football League Premiership. It took the young club, dubbed “Country Bumpkins” because to their rural recruiting and CB symbol, four years to win their first championship in 1938. The grand final victory was replicated in 1942, breaking a 38-year premiership drought.
In 1967, after defeating St. George in the final to break their 11-year premiership dynasty, “The Berries” (as they were known at the time) fell to South Sydney in the grand final. However, the club’s return to the top of the table paved the way for off-field reorganization, which helped it become one of the most consistent achievers in the remaining decades of the twentieth century.
Canterbury changed its name to “The Bulldogs” in 1978. Nicknames like “Cantabs,” “CBs,” and “Berries” were perceived to be “soft,” and the team desired something to represent determination and grit. The new name and logo were obtained from Bill Caralis, the owner of a Sydney liquor store. A grand final appearance in 1979, followed by a grand final win in 1980 with a young, passionate, and free-running team known as “The Entertainers,” marked the start of a golden era that would deliver three more grand final victories in the 1980s: 1984, 1985, and 1988.
