Fortunately the players, who had with them the trophy spoils of that day's 19-14 NSW Rugby League grand final win against the Balmain Tigers, couldn't have been more wrong.

Instead of being there to rescue them, the emergency vehicles were waiting to salute them.

Watched by about 2000 fans packed into the small terminal and dressed in team colours, three fire engines gave the Raiders a heroes' welcome after they touched down, spraying their planes with water cannons as the Raiders' theme song pumped out of a PA system.After walking through the joyous mob, Mal Meninga and his team travelled on to an even bigger reception at their Mawson clubhouse, where a crowd of thousands had been partying inside and outside awaiting the Green Machine's belated return. Some had been boozing since the early hours of the day, in contrast with the players who had been forced to sit in a 'dry' aircraft for almost an hour at Canterbury airport before their flight home.

As a long, long night of partying gathered pace and rolled on into Queanbeyan, the enormity of the win began sinking in for the players.They had become the first non-Sydney team to win the NSWRL title (which by then included Brisbane, Gold Coast and Newcastle), the first team to win the title from outside the top three and the first to do it in extra time.

The Clive Churchill Medal winner on the day, lock Brad Clyde, remembers a sense of having achieved something huge for his home city, which was, and still is to a lesser degree, derided by many outsiders.

"I remember thinking that we'd created history [and] that no one could take that away from us," Clyde said [in 2009].

"And we knew it was a monumental achievement for the city which had been right behind us since 1982." While the likes of Clyde and halfback Ricky Stuart were relative youngsters, overall the Raiders were an experienced, battle-hardened unit by grand final day, having stared down nine sudden death matches in a row to make the Sydney Football Stadium decider.

Critically many of them knew what to expect on a day where hype can get the best of a team.

One of the newer teams in the competition, the Raiders had learnt that lesson the hard way in their first grand final appearance in 1987. That year they had been swept up in the hoopla of the occasion, joining street parades and public receptions thrown in the lead-up to the grand final.

By the match day they were emotionally drained and, in the end, well beaten by a fine Manly side. When their next shot came two years later, the Raiders weren't going to make the same mistake. As much as it was possible in a city that was, as one newspaper put it, "festooned with green, blue and white streamers ... [where] there is green hair, green bread, green fountains and [where] the Raiders' absurd theme song has been flogged to death on every radio station", the players kept a lid on their mood. [Former] Raiders chairman John McIntyre fondly recalls a newspaper headline after he had declined an offer from Prime Minister Bob Hawke's office to attend a parliamentary reception before the game.

"I said to them, 'With the greatest of respect, please hold that off until we win [a grand final]' and the headline in The Mirror the following day was, 'No, Prime Minister'," McIntyre said.

Having ignored countless distractions, when they ran out to play the Raiders had no excuses. They were experienced, focused and in form, and they needed to be against the previous year's beaten grand finalists.

However the game started to go very badly for Canberra 12 minutes in when Tigers winger James Grant intercepted a pass from prop Brent Todd and streaked to the line to score. The Raiders responded with a penalty 10 minutes later, but Tigers second-rower Paul Sironen's try just before half-time made it 12-2. After a confidence-building speech from coach Tim Sheens, the Raiders kept attacking hard in the second half, thanks in large part to the tactical kicking of halfback Ricky Stuart, who was wearing boots borrowed from rugby great and former Queanbeyan Whites teammate David Campese. Stuart's favourite pair had been stolen that week.

Midway through the frenetic second half, fullback Gary Belcher scored for the Raiders, but it seemed too little too late, especially given the Tigers were soon to push further ahead to 14-8.

With two minutes to go it looked like the Raiders were doomed. McIntyre remembers leaving his seat to walk downstairs to commiserate with the team.

It was only when he reached ground level that he glimpsed Laurie Daley famously overhead pass the ball to John 'Chicka' Ferguson, who sidestepped three Tigers and barged over for the most famous try in Raiders history. Meninga's conversion levelled the scores and took the game into extra time. The tide had most certainly turned. Just two minutes in to extra time, a Chris O'Sullivan field goal put the Raiders one point ahead of the visibly flagging Tigers. Then, five minutes into the second period of extra time, Meninga tossed the ball to Raiders reserve prop Steve Jackson 20m out. The little known Queenslander charged ahead, stepping, palming and spinning out of tackles before carrying two Tigers defenders over the line.

Clyde said of the effort, "I don't know if there's enough superlatives to describe Steve Jackson's try ... it was very, very special." When the siren sounded, the ecstatic Raiders embraced and jumped and fist pumped in the centre of the one-year-old stadium. Fans in the ground waved mocked-up Canberra Times front pages reading "WE DID IT!". Whether they were in Sydney or at home in Canberra, about 15,000 supporters cheered in commemorative T-shirts they'd bought in the days beforehand.

But if the Raiders and their fans were in nirvana, the Tigers were in a living hell.

As Canberra skipper Mal Meninga famously wept tears of joy hugging his teammates and coach Sheens, his opposite number, Wayne Pearce, sat distraught nearby. The shattered Tigers skipper sitting alone on the ground with his arms resting on his knees remains an iconic image of that afternoon.

Pearce said [in 2009] he had watched the match for the first time ever with some teammates just four years ago [2005].

While many aspects of the game surprised him on review, particularly its pace, he needed no reminding of his dejection in its aftermath. "I remember how painful it was after the game on the field when you had the Canberra team ecstatic and me and my team just shattered," Pearce said.

"Sitting there, it was a very lonely, very isolated feeling and just empty. The way we lost it was what hurt. Having been there the previous year and having been in a position to win the game ... it was just not to be." After suffering through the presentation of trophies to Meninga and his team, the Tigers gladly retreated to their dressing room. Reports described the Tigers room as a place of "unyielding pain and desolation". Pearce and teammates, including champion prop Steve Roach, were said to be still speechless an hour after the match. Sironen, one of the Tigers' best, who coach Warren Ryan controversially substituted out of the game with 15 minutes to go, later said, "If I'd had a rope on Sunday afternoon I would have strung myself from the goalpost, I felt so bad. There's nothing you can compare it to, but I suppose the nearest thing you can come to it is what Warren Ryan said: 'It's like losing a member of your family'." Tigers fans, while devastated, were proud of their team. When the players arrived at the clubhouse, the fans gave them a noisy reception of cheers and applause.

But, as Pearce recalls, the efforts to console the team were hopeless. "The club was packed and they cheered us as we came in. But we thought, 'What are you cheering for, we don't deserve it'. They tried to cheer us up but it had absolutely no effect." The impact on the Tigers was long lasting, and for some the memory still hurts. Despite the brave talk on the day about coming back better the next season, the fact was the Tigers had lost two grand finals in a row. Deep down many knew they'd probably missed their chance." Quite a few of us were getting a bit older and there was no doubt that '89 was our peak," Pearce said. "Emotionally it was very difficult to bounce back from back-to-back grand final losses. With something like that, you've worked towards it for years. Even now when I think about the game there's still a negative charge there."

It is unlikely many of the Raiders or Tigers could have imagined back then in their opposite states of euphoria and despair that almost 20 years later, in the league's centenary year, their grand final would still be hailed by many as the greatest ever.