Tommy Raudonikis

Tommy Raudonikis OAM (born 13 April 1950[4]) is an Australian former rugby league footballer and coach. He played over 29 Tests and World Cup games as Australia representative halfback and captained his country in two Tests of the 1973 Kangaroo tour.

Tommy Raudonikis

Personal information
Full name	Tom Raudonikis
Born	13 April 1950 Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
Playing information
Height	170 cm (5 ft 7 in)[1]
Weight	11 st 7 lb (73 kg)[1]
Position	Halfback
Club Years Team Pld T G FG P 1969–79 Western Suburbs 202 29 0 0 116 1980–82 Newtown Jets 37 4 0 0 16 1983 Brothers (Brisbane) Total 239 33 0 0 132 Representative Years Team Pld T G FG P 1971–80 New South Wales 24 11 0 0 33 1971–80 Australia 20 2 0 0 6 1972–80 NSW City 8 4 0 0 12
Coaching information
Club Years Team Gms W D L W% 1983 Brothers (Brisbane) Norths (Brisbane) Ipswich Jets 1995–99 Western Suburbs 114 39 1 74 34 Total 114 39 1 74 34 Representative Years Team Gms W D L W% 1997–98 New South Wales 6 3 0 3 50
Source: [2][3]

Background

Raudonikis was born Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. He is the son of a Lithuanian immigrant father and a Swiss immigrant mother.

He joined the RAAF as an Engineering Apprentice in 1967 and spent three years under training at RAAF Wagga.

Club playing career

He played 202 games for the Western Suburbs Magpies between 1969 and 1979 before moving to the Newtown Jets for 37 games in three seasons between 1980 and 1982. He played under two famous coaches, Roy Masters at Wests and Warren Ryan at Newtown. Some rate him the toughest player ever to have played in the halves and in September 2004 he was named in the Western Suburbs Magpies team of the century.

Raudonikis was Western Suburbs Club Captain from 1971 to 1979, and was Newtown Club Captain from 1980 to 1982.[5]

• 240+ senior game for Western Suburbs Magpies and Newtown Jets
• Won the 1972 Rothmans Medal

Representative playing career

Raudonikis was first selected in an Australian squad in 1971 behind Souths halfback Bob Grant and made his run on debut in 1972 against the Kiwis (the same year he won the Rothmans Medal for best club player for the season). He was the regular Test halfback for the next six years. He made Test appearances up until 1980 by which time he was being challenged by Greg Oliphant and Steve Mortimer. He was the captain of the New South Wales State of Origin team in the inaugural 1980 contest.

• NSW and Australian halfback throughout the 1970s
• First NSW state of origin captain in 1980
• Coached NSW Blues in 1997 and 1998 Origin Series
• NSW Sporting Hall of Fame
• Kangaroos captain in 1973 for the deciding Ashes test against Great Britain (won 15–5) and the opening test against France (won 21–9)
• 29 Test and World Cup caps

Awards

Raudonikis in 2008

• Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1982
• Team of the Century with Wests Tigers and Western Suburbs
• Wests Magpies # 1 club man in 100 years and Magpie Immortal
• Voted Newtown's Greatest Import in 100 years
• Men of Leagues' Toughest 12 in last 50 years
• ARL's greatest 100 in past 100 years

Coaching career

Raudonikis' final playing year was in a captain coach role at Brisbane Brothers in 1983. He later coached Brisbane Norths and the Ipswich Jets in the Brisbane Rugby League premiership. Returning to Sydney, he was coach of the Western Suburbs Magpies from 1995 until the formation of the Wests Tigers joint venture with the Balmain Tigers at the end of 1999. He had some initial coaching success making the finals in 1996, but Wests were ultimately unable to build on this and only won six games in their final two seasons.

Raudonikis coached the Blues in the 1997 and 1998 series. In those series he entered State of Origin folklore when he introduced the "Cattledog" call to which NSW players responded by breaking from the scrum with fists flying, resulting in two infamous all-in-brawls.

"'Tom Terrific' is impervious to pain. On and off the field Raudonikis was all heart and hustle. Determination and toughness marked his 20 Tests for Australia and his long career with Wests and Newtown and followed him to coaching in Brisbane and Sydney."

Roy Masters[6]

In the media

Raudonikis is a long-term friend of 2GB radio station owner John Singleton. Through this friendship, he also participated as a commentator for the Continuous Call Team with Ray Hadley on 2GB.

Raudonikis' hospitalization in August 2006 for a heart bypass operation made Australian sports news and drew messages of support from a spectrum of famous former players including Wests icons Arthur Summons (the subject of the NRL trophy with Norm Provan).[7]

Raudonikis made an appearance in the 2007 rugby league drama film The Final Winter.[8]

Raudonikis at one stage worked as a part of the Channel 9 rugby league commentary team.

In February 2008, Raudonikis was named in the list of Australia's 100 Greatest Players (1908–2007) which was commissioned by the NRL and ARL to celebrate the code's centenary year in Australia.[9][10] Also in 2008 the Western Suburbs Magpies celebrated their centenary by inducting six inaugural members, including Raudonikis, into the club's Hall of Fame.[11]

In 2017, Raudonikis was a weekly guest on The Footy Show and had his own segment, "The Raudonikis Report".[12][13]

Footnotes

1. "World Series". Rugby League Week. 1975–1976. p. 85.
2. RL stats
3. RLP
4. Rugby League Project
5. Rugby League Project
6. Roy Masters (2 August 2006). "Tom terrific after heart cops beating". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
7. Roy Masters (2 August 2006). "Tom terrific after heart cops beating". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 26 July 2008.
8. Douglas Kennedy and Elissa Blake (19 August 2007). "League legends in The Final Winter". The Sunday Mail. Australia: Queensland Newspapers. Retrieved 2 October 2010.
9. Peter Cassidy (23 February 2008). "Controversy reigns as NRL releases top 100 players". Macquarie National News. Archived from the original on 25 February 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2008.
10. "Centenary of Rugby League – The Players". NRL & ARL. 23 February 2008. Archived from the original on 26 February 2008. Retrieved 23 February 2008.
11. westsmagpies.net (2008). "Western Suburbs Magpies Hall of Fame". Wests Archives. Western Suburbs Magpies R.L.F.C. Archived from the original on 14 October 2008. Retrieved 28 November 2009.
12. http://www.sportingnews.com/au/league/news/tommy-raudonikis-drops-f-bomb-on-footy-show/l4d4a2sykq2917yshownwjvdq
13. https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/the-raudonikis-report

External links

• Tommy Raudonikis at IMDb
• Tom Raudonikis' website
• Tommy Raudonikis, Wests Rugby League Team and the Working Class of Campbelltown, New South Wales - article in Football Studies 1998 Vol 1
• Era of the biff profile

Sources

• Alan Whiticker & Glen Hudson (2007). The Encyclopedia of Rugby League Players. Wetherill Park, New South Wales: Gary Allen Pty Ltd. ISBN 978-1-877082-93-1.