Emilio Bounassif might not have been alive to see it, but he knows the 2004 NRL grand final by heart.
“I have watched it 10 times, I’m telling you, 10 times. I’ve memorised it.”
The 18-year-old was born two years after that grand final, the last time the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs won the title.
“I’ve told my parents, why didn’t you create me earlier so I could have experienced that,” he says, shaking his head. “I was around in 2012 and 2014 when we lost our last grand finals but, for most of my life, we have been a losing club.”
Bounassif has attended every Bulldogs match this year. He remained a diehard fan despite the club being in the doldrums for nearly a decade.
But for the first time in eight years, the Bulldogs have made the finals, and Bounassif will finally be able to attend a game after the regular season ends.
“Making the finals means the world to me. It means so much to me I actually started crying when we made it.
“When you put your heart and soul into something and it doesn’t really meet your expectations for a long time, it’s draining. But when it starts to exceed your expectations, it’s such a beautiful and relieving feeling.”
Bounassif is a prolific TikTok content creator, turning up to games and interviewing fans, often joking or celebrating alongside them.
He is part of a new generation of Bulldogs supporters who combine their passion for the club with being internet savvy – weaving the club’s unique fan culture into online content.
The culture stands out in Australian sport because it incorporates dancing and singing from local migrant communities – most prominently western Sydney’s Lebanese community.
Bounassif was there in late August when Belmore exploded with joy as finals football looked secured after a win over the Warriors – the first time the area had seen such celebrations in a decade.
People danced and sang at a Belmore Road intersection with traffic held up for kilometres as fans partied.
Wins over the Dolphins, Raiders and bitter rivals the Dragons were also celebrated wildly in the latter part of the season with footage on TikTok showing fans reclaiming Burwood Road in Belmore too, drums in hand.
The club had been rebuilding after taking out the wooden spoon in 2021. It’s been years of steady progress – before the club roared back to life this season.
They have won more matches in 2024 than in the past three seasons combined – propelling them to sixth on the ladder and into a week one finals showdown with Manly on Sunday.
The longtime fan Suhayb Elmarouk has also turned to content creation to channel his passion. He started the cult sports podcast Ajibeh’s Couch amid western Sydney’s tough lockdowns during the pandemic.
Alongside his longtime collaborator Fareed Tawk, who posts NRL takes on TikTok under the username “HecticFred”, Elmarouk has built a following of dedicated listeners.
They cannot hide how giddy they are to see celebrations return to Belmore’s streets.
“I knew as soon as we started winning, people would come back with the drums and the dancing, it’s in our blood. You can’t change these things, you can’t take that out of a fanbase’s blood,” Elmarouk says.
Tawk says prior disappointment led to this year’s wild scenes in Belmore – and made the club’s resurgence more sweet.
“This is the release of all the pain and negative emotions we’ve had for the past five to eight years.
“Teams that have been worse for longer wouldn’t celebrate like this when they come back – there’s just something about the Dogs’ fans and our culture that makes us party a lot harder than anyone else.”
The dancing and drumming is similar to a Lebanese wedding – including the zaffe, when the groom leaves his home for his bride, serenaded by singing and a tableh handheld drum.
There’s also the dabke, a traditional Levantine dance reserved for joyous occasions, a combination of circle and line dancing with some stomping for good measure.
These celebrations are based on the “Lebanese way of doing things”, according to Elmarouk, who says they are rooted in the community’s socioeconomic history.
“A lot of our families have lived through war, poverty and tragedy, but this is why sport is so beautiful, it alleviates all of that. It makes us happy and you can’t buy that.”
The zealous celebrations have been derided by some online but the Bulldogs coach, Cameron Ciraldo, says the players feed off the “energy” of the fans.
“We love our fans. They’ve waited a long time to be involved in these sort of games and this end of the season so now they’re really excited – and they’re one of our driving forces,” he said late last week.
Ciraldo told reporters the club had worked to engage local migrant communities – including the Lebanese community. The drumming created a “different” atmosphere compared to other clubs.
“The ethnic population makes up a fair part of this area and we represent this area with great pride,” the coach said.
Nina Najjar, another Bulldogs fan and content creator, says the parties in Belmore this year have given a new generation of fans a chance to learn how the club celebrates big wins.
“There’s been a passing of the torch,” the 18-year-old says. “At one of the parties, an older guy, clearly very experienced, was teaching us how to drum and do the dabke. Us younger fans haven’t had the chance to actually celebrate anything – until this year.”
