MARK PARTON salutes the outgoing captain of the Raiders

THE Raiders. What a shocker of a year, made worse by the fact that we entered it with such amazing expectations.

Here we are with just a few games to go, wondering if the Green Machine could perhaps score another wooden spoon. And if you were thinking: “It couldn’t get any worse than this”, it has.

Captain Alan Tongue has raised his head from the bunker to announce that he was done. Captain Courageous has decided it is time to go; that his battered 30-year-old body probably couldn’t stand the rigours of another season.

In the last 12 years, Alan Tongue has been a wonderful servant to the club and to the game. He plays it the way it is supposed to be played.

He’s a throwback to the times when the game was played for the love of it. Tonguey came to town as a skinny teenage “ranga” from the sticks with a dream to play league at the highest level.

“I came down here just wanting to play footy as well as I could,” Alan told me.

The boy from Dungowan joined the club last century… 1998, before debuting in first grade two years later. He won the club rookie of the year award in 2000. When Matt Elliott took over as coach in ’02, he made it clear to Tongue that he should “maybe look for somewhere else to play”, but he knuckled down and won the favour of the new coach.

Tongue will be remembered not for his freakish natural ability, but for his heart and his hard work. He’s a tackling machine and a captain who leads more by what he does than what he says.

He has always treated the fans, the club, opponents, media and sponsors with respect. If there were more Alan Tongues out there, rugby league would be a better game.

The retiring captain is thankful for his small-town roots.
“I grew up in small, country farming community. We take nothing for granted,” he said. “When my brother turns up to play, he opens up the ground and he cleans out the sheds after the game. He does it for the game,” he added.

However, in breaking news, I can reveal that Tongue is already being courted by another club. The Dungowan Cowboys, up near Tamworth, have been twisting his arm for years trying to convince him to have a run with his two brothers.

“It’d be nice to do,” Tonguey told me with a sparkle in his eye. “I might be able to go up there and have a game or two.”

Mark Parton is the breakfast announcer at 2CC