In winning their inaugural NRL match, the Dolphins have found a special kind of history

If you're reading this, you have a team. You must. Everybody who watches a sport, any sport, has a team.

It might be a team you live and die for every single day. It might be a team you loved long ago but have since moved beyond. It might be a team you only recently took up but now you can't imagine your life without them.

You might have played for this team. You might have coached them. You might have only watched them. It doesn't matter. They're your team, aren't they? You either can't imagine a life without them or you just don't want to.

Do me a favour and think about your team. Think about when they made you happy. Think about when they made you sad. Think about when they hurt you. Think about when they didn't. God, it was incredible wasn't it?

We all have lives — rich, full lives, that have so many highs and lows and ups and downs and all the rest — but, if someone asks you about the times your team took you up and down, you don't really need to search for it or think about it because it's already right there at the front of your mind, isn't it?

Teams are handed down from one person to the next. Maybe it was your father who gave it to you, or your grandfather, or your grandmother, or a coach, or a friend or a parent.

It doesn't really matter, what matters is you have it now and it's something you'd gladly pass on.

Maybe you'll give it to your son, or your daughter, or your niece, or your nephew, or some kid you know from around the way. Who can say?

There's just a thing that lives in you, a flame that keeps burning. It's not that you'd push it on anyone, no way, never.

It's just that you love it and, through that love, someone else would learn to do it too. They might have it handed to them the way it was handed to you.

That's why the Dolphins win over the Roosters is important. As the sun rises over Redcliffe, you have to understand how much this matters, because winning is the finest thing a team can do, so long as they can actually do it.

The Dolphins have existed for a long time. If you've a bit of a Queensland fan about you, they're better known as Redcliffe and they've a storied history. If you don't mind, 10 premierships since 1947, and each of them matters because the Dolphins say they matter, dammit.

They'll exist for a long time to come as well. This isn't a Crushers situation, where chaos reigned and the hard times would eventually flatten a team beneath the weight of its own existence. The NRL is committed. The Dolphins are committed. These red, white and gold boys are here to stay.

Were you a little underwhelmed heading into that game on Sunday? It's alright if you were. Yeah, the Dolphins were the first new NRL side in 16 years. Their jerseys looked like Vanilla Coke cans. They didn't sign a heap of stars. Calling themselves "The Dolphins" instead of having an actual, geographic location is a misstep they'll be dealing with for years to come.

But, damn it, if it didn't feel special. Damn it if it didn't feel like a real, important thing when Jesse Bromwich led them on the field for the first time. Damn it if it didn't get the heart racing when Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow backed up a break from Jeremy Marshall-King to score the club's first try.

And damn it if it didn't feel good as the game came to them.

It's nothing against the Roosters, you must understand. This isn't about them, not really. On this day, they only existed as the rock against which the Dolphins broke themselves against, a force with which to be reckoned with.

Arthur Beetson played for the Roosters, many years ago but, before and after that, he played for the Dolphins and, as the two teams locked horns, that meant something.

They were level at half-time and it's not important how we got there. What's important is what happened next, because things changed slowly, gradual enough that good judges could see it coming and then it happened, all at once, because this game was close until it wasn't.

Connelly Lemuelu — an outside back who's found a home with the tough stuff, ran right the hell over Sam Walker to score a try off a good ball from Sean O'Sullivan.

Then Isaiya Katoa found a change of pace on the last tackle that ended with Jamayne Isaako getting over in the corner.

Katoa did it again for Isaako soon after, then reality came into view and everybody realised the Dolphins were going to do it.

By the time the Arthur Beetson Legacy Medal was being laid around a deserving Felise Kaufusi's neck, all the country that wasn't red, white and blue was all in for the Phins.

Next week, the Dolphins play Canberra. It won't be an easy one, even though they're playing at Redcliffe. It took a special effort for them to win on Sunday and summoning that level of fortitude two weeks in a row is tough, even for a Wayne Bennett team.

After that, things get even harder. As fine as this day was, the Dolphins could still finish with the wooden spoon.

However, even if they did, they'll have this win, this day, this victory they can hold on to forever that, forever, started as soon as the full-time whistle went.

In winning this match, Bennett's side has created a memory for their side and their fans and everybody else in rugby league that will abide for years to come.

There's no way to overstate what this victory means, because a team could win a hundred games or a dozen premierships but they can only play their first game for the first time once and, if that match slips through their fingers, it's something they can never get back.

So think about that team you love. Think about that team that somebody gave you all those years ago and think about all the highs and lows that team has taken you through in all the years since and think about all the games and all the fans who came before you.

Imagine now, just for a moment, if you were there for the first time. The first game your team ever played, the game from which the rest of their existence would stretch out for better or for worse, the game where there were no yesterdays and only tomorrows, only a future that had no limits but your own dreams.

Imagine handing the team down to whoever comes after you and telling them that, yeah, you were there when it happened, when they started it off with a win. The last time that happened for a new NRL team was in 1998. So, before Sunday, it was a rare thing, but now we've all seen it.

You watched it happen. You saw the Dolphins run onto the Lang Park pitch with their chins up and their hearts full and you saw them take on something close to the best the NRL had to offer and you saw them win and you saw grown men cry at what this team had done.

They might win a thousand more games, but they can never win for the first time again. Whatever happens next will happen next, but what's already happened is a hell of thing.

Story By:Nick Campton

Original Story Link:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-06/dolphins-nrl-first-game-roosters-rugby-league/102056754