Canberra Raiders fans turn out in droves to celebrate Jarrod Croker's 300th NRL game

The mother of Canberra Raiders captain Jarrod Croker is too nervous to sit still at the best of times, so how do you think she felt when 21,082 people - the biggest crowd at Canberra Stadium since the 2019 preliminary final - had their eyes pinned on her son?

Croker's 300^th game felt like everything it should have. The hype, excitement, the emotion. "It feels like a grand final," one punter told another as they took their seats in the Mal Meninga Grandstand.

It had everything except the result. Someone clearly forgot to give the New Zealand Warriors the script, as the visitors came to Canberra and conquered an emotion-charged city with a runaway 36-14 win on Friday night. The finish was so dire, scores of Raiders fans started leaving the venue with 12 minutes left.

Croker had been mobbed by fans in the car park before the gates had even opened and needed a club staffer to escort him inside, where lines at merchandise stands constantly stretched hundreds of people deep, all of them in search of Croker 300 shirts. The line along the southern bowl didn't die down, not once.

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Walking around the northern end, Pauline would have heard the chorus of blue and maroon-clad folk from the Goulburn Stockmen, with whom Croker won a Group 6 grand final as a 16-year-old in 2007.

She would have seen her son lead the Raiders onto the field with his son Rory by his side. Tears began to well in Croker's eyes the moment he saw baby Tate in the arms of his wife Brittney.

Then came the kick-off, and if Pauline stuck around until the third minute, she would have seen a green-specked crowd stand as one in a nod to the number on Croker's back.

Hold on, if she stuck around?

"She still can't sit through a game," Brittney Croker laughed, "but she is one proud mum."

As you would be.

Through 14 years in first grade, the most controversial thing Croker has done is have bleach blonde tips running through his hair.

He makes a fan's eyes light up when he dishes out a sweat-soaked headgear at the end of every game - although this week's edition is going home with the Raiders captain - and turns up at the house of the odd supporter to practice goal-kicking with a starry-eyed youngster.

All fans yearned for on this night was to see the ball in Croker's hands. "Toots", they'd shout, "have a go for Toots!" Because he deserved better on this night and they knew it.

"I think he'll be one of the best centres that the Raiders have ever produced, if not the best," Croker's former under 20s premiership-winning coach Tony Adam said, more than six years and 100 games ago.

Then came a brief pause, and the realisation "he's got some stiff competition there with Mal ... but he'll be up there".

Stiff competition might be an understatement considering the small matter of Meninga's rugby league immortality. The halcyon days of Mal are more than a lifetime ago for a generation of Raiders fans who have grown up with Croker as their man.

It was with Croker at the helm the Raiders went closest to returning to those golden years. Then his body started to fail him.

In the confines of a Queensland bubble, Raiders coach Ricky Stuart sat his captain down and opened his eyes to the prospect of retirement. The fear was Croker would be remembered as a shadow of his former self.

Yet, when 21,082 pushed through the turnstiles on Friday, it was clear he would not.

If only they could remember the end of the night just a little more fondly.

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