Official opening for new Canberra Raiders base

The Canberra Raiders have officially opened their Huawei Raiders Centre in the ACT suburb of Braddon.

Opened on Friday, the state-of-the-art facility is one of the largest and impressive high-performance facilities of its type and is fitted out with features including an expansive modern gym, hydrotherapy facilities, theatre and filming studio along with the club’s administrative facilities.

Huawei not only features as the naming rights partner of the centre, they also feature throughout the facility, with Huawei technology at the forefront of infrastructure including the IT equipment and phone systems.

Friday’s opening also coincided with the naming of the facilities Boardroom, which will be now known as the McIntrye Boardroom, to reflect the contribution of the McIntyre family, led by club founding father Les McIntyre and former Chairman and current Club Patron John McIntyre.

The $19 million facility was backed by the ACT Government contributing $5 million and the NSW Government $4 million.

Acknowledging this support, Raiders Chief Executive Don Furner stated “12 months ago, we stood out on the oval with the NSW Deputy Premier and ACT Deputy Chief Minister and we turned the first sod on this unique project. It’s unique because it brings us back to where we were 21 years ago.

“It’s in a brilliant setting, it’s an historically listed oval. Sport and rugby league has been played here since 1925. It was also unique because of the unique partnerships between both governments. The governments no-border policy is played out here for all to see. It offers young kids in these areas the facilities that they would get in the bigger cities.”

Huawei Australia’s backing for the Centre follows the electrical and communications giant renewing its major sponsorship of the Canberra Raiders for the 2020 and 2021 seasons in June last year - taking the company’s sponsorship to 10 full seasons of the NRL.

Huawei has also stepped in to ensure that the Raiders players and staff can be online at the Centre - stepping up after a delay in getting the Centre hooked up to a National Broadband Network service.

With the centre’s NBN connection delayed Huawei has supplied the centre with an industrial-grade 4G router that will provide high-speed broadband connectivity to the centre until a connection to the NBN can be secured.

Images of the new Huawei Raiders Centre courtesy of the Canberra Raiders.