Brisbane Bears

Establishment

In 1986, the VFL Commission announced plans to set up privately owned clubs based in Perth and Brisbane, motivated by the need to sell multimillion-dollar licences to save a number of Victorian clubs which were struggling financially. A consortium headed by former actor Paul Cronin and bankrolled by entrepreneur Christopher Skase was awarded the Brisbane licence. Not long afterwards, the club was officially announced as the Brisbane Bears, signing recently retired Hawthorn player Peter Knights as coach, and unveiling a playing strip consisting of a gold with a maroon yoke and a triangular "BB" logo intended to represent a stylised map of the club's home state, Queensland, with the outline of a koala head appearing inside of the larger B.

The choice of the koala as a mascot and moniker was often mocked and tagged tacky as the Australian marsupial animal is not a bear and is typically sedate and hardly ferocious. Despite this, the bear appeared roaring on many of the marketing and promotional materials for the club, including the club's official VFL logo . However, regardless of such marketing, the team's poor on-field performances in the first seven years allowed the Bears' mascot to be targeted gratuitously, with nicknames like "The Bad News Bears" and "The Carrara Koalas".

The new club was given very little time in which to set itself up, with few players and no suitable home ground. Brisbane's main outdoor venue, the Brisbane Cricket Ground, was encircled by a dog racing track at the time. The only other stadiums that were reasonably large enough to accommodate the Bears were rectangular fields better suited to rugby league, rugby union and soccer than for an Australian rules team. Rugby and soccer had long been established as the main football codes in Brisbane. Without an acceptable facility in Brisbane itself, the Bears-based themselves at Carrara Oval, an hour's drive south-east of Brisbane on the Gold Coast. Temporary stands, club rooms and facilities were erected on the slopes surrounding the field.

Upon its admission, the Bears did not have a large reserve of local players from which to compile a VFL-standard playing list. To assist with its inaugural playing list, the VFL arranged for every other club to provide at least two players; understandably, other clubs were averse to providing top-line players and few of the players provided were of a high quality. The Bears pursued a number of stars aggressively and did manage a few key signings, including Collingwood's captain Mark Williams, and 1985 Brownlow Medallist Brad Hardie. A significant proportion of the player list was recruited from the South Australian National Football League and West Australian Football League. Mark Mickan, a 6'5" (196 cm) ruckman recruited from West Adelaide, was appointed captain of the Bears in its inaugural season.

Early years

The Bears won their first game in the VFL against North Melbourne at the Melbourne Cricket Ground 19.23 (137) to 15.14 (104) in front of 14,096 fans, and also won its second game, but ultimately fell towards the bottom of the ladder. The club avoided the wooden spoon by beating Richmond in the final round, and finished with six wins. The club attracted 98,616 fans to the eleven matches at Carrara Oval, an average of 8,965 per game, which was the lowest in the competition behind Fitzroy's 11,498. By contrast, the other new 1987 team the West Coast Eagles, with Australian rules football long established as the major football code in Perth, attracted 291,317 to their home games at Subiaco Oval and the WACA at an average of 26,483 per game.^[1]

The club again recruited aggressively, landing Sydney Swans glamour spearhead Warwick Capper. In 1988 and 1989 the club suffered some severe defeats, finishing 13th and 10th respectively. Knights was sacked with eight rounds to play in the 1989 season. The club psychologist, Paul Feltham, took charge of the team for the remainder of the year.

By this stage, the club was also under severe financial pressure. Attendances had been very poor due to poor performances and the long distance between Gold Coast and Brisbane. The collapse of Skase's business empire and his sudden departure for Spain in late 1989 almost resulted in the death of the Bears. Over the ensuing preseason the players threatened strike action, but Cronin resigned, the club was taken over by the AFL, re-sold to Gold Coast businessman Reuben Pelerman, and the crisis was averted. The AFL spent significant amounts of money to help the Bears survive over the coming years, and the club was provided with priority draft picks and special recruiting zones to give it access to some of the nation's best talent, which over the next few years allowed the club to recruit future stars such as Michael Voss, Jason Akermanis, Clark Keating, Steven Lawrence and Darryl White.

Four-time QAFL premiership coach Norm Dare took over as coach in 1990, but the club won the wooden spoon. He was replaced in 1991 by former Carlton premiership coach Robert Walls, who immediately set about rebuilding the playing list; having inherited the oldest list in the league, by the end of the season he had the youngest. He insisted that the Bears not bend to the will of powerful Victorian clubs in recruitment matters, which was seen most notably in the case of the young Nathan Buckley – Buckley, who in 1992 won the SANFL's Magarey Medal and was a premiership winner with Port Adelaide, winning the Jack Oatey Medal for being Best on Ground in the SANFL Grand Final, was a zone recruit signed to the club on a one-year contract in 1993, which stipulated that he would be released to the club of his choice if he so desired at the completion of the contract; he was cleared to Collingwood as he had requested, in exchange for premiership centre-half forward Craig Starcevich, goalsneak Troy Lehmann and an early draft pick which the Bears used to recruit future star Chris Scott.

Later years

Off-field, Pelerman was losing millions of dollars annually on the club, and he agreed to release the Bears from private ownership and revert to a traditional club structure in which the club's members were able to elect the board. In 1992, the club abandoned its oft-ridiculed "BB" Guernsey and adopted a predominantly maroon strip with a gold V and white trim. More significantly, in 1993 the club moved permanently to the Gabba; with the club now playing in its home city, membership and attendances instantly tripled. The dog racing track around the ground was removed, the surface was upgraded and the stands gradually replaced over the next few years with a view to converting the tired old ground to a state-of-the-art sporting facility.

In 1994, the Bears changed the club logo and the club song, and also began to show signs of a competitive side and were contenders for a finals berth before falling away in the last five games of the season. Then, in 1995, the club reached the finals after an extraordinary late-season recovery. After Round 15, the Bears were third-last on the ladder with four wins, and Robert Walls had announced his resignation as coach halfway through the season, but committed himself to seeing out the year. In Round 16, the Bears trailed Hawthorn by 45 points at three-quarter time, but mounted an astounding final-quarter comeback to win the match by 7 points; it was the largest final quarter comeback in league history. Brisbane then won five of its six remaining matches in the home-and-away season, including against Richmond and Essendon who were both in the top four, to just reach the finals for the first time, albeit with a win-loss record of only 10–12. The team was eliminated, but not disgraced, after losing its first ever final to eventual premiers Carlton by 13 points.

Under the coaching of former Richmond premiership player John Northey, Brisbane had an excellent 1996 season, finishing third behind Sydney and North Melbourne. They made a good accounting of themselves in the finals, with two wins at the Gabba and a loss in the Preliminary Final to eventual premiers North Melbourne. Michael Voss also became the only Brisbane Bears player to win the Brownlow Medal, sharing the honour with Essendon's James Hird.

However, the club was still struggling off-field. One of the Bears' biggest problems was its lack of support (both on and off the field) in Melbourne, the location of most of its away matches. In mid-1996, the struggling Fitzroy Football Club collapsed due to financial pressures and was seeking to merge its assets with another club. When a merger with North Melbourne in forming the North Fitzroy Kangaroos failed to win the support of the other AFL clubs, a deal for a merger was done between Fitzroy and the Bears. The new team was known as the Brisbane Lions, based at the Gabba, with Northey as the coach of the merged club. As such, the history of the Brisbane Bears as an individual entity ended after the 1996 season, with ten seasons of competition and the third-place finish in 1996 as its best performance. The Bears last match as a separate entity was a preliminary final on Saturday 21 September 1996 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (where the Bears played their first VFL/AFL game). It was against North Melbourne, their first and last ever opponents, the Bears lost by 38 points to North who would go on to win the premiership that year.When the team came off the MCG, the Bears were finished after a short and troubled existence.

Mascot

The Bears' mascot was the koala, which is not a Bear. Their uniform originally featured a koala.

Colours

• Maroon      and Gold      (1987–1988)
• Cerise      and Gold      (1989–1991)
• Maroon     , Gold      and White      (1992–1996)

Club Songs

The Brisbane Football Club had 2 Club Songs in its existence.

Supporter base

Premierships

• Reserves – 1991
• Seniors – None
• Night Series/Pre-Season – None
• Lightning Series – None

Wooden spoons

• 1990
• 1991

Individual awards

• Darryl White – Goal of the Year (1992)
• Nathan Buckley – AFL Rising Star (1993)
• Chris Scott – AFL Rising Star (1994)
• Michael Voss – Brownlow Medal (1996), All-Australian (1996)
• Craig Lambert – All-Australian (1996)

Honour roll

Club Records

• Total Matches Played: 222 (72 wins, 2 draws, 148 losses)
• Highest Score: 33.21 (219) vs Sydney, Round 8, 1993
• Lowest Score: 2.5 (17) vs Hawthorn, Round 12, 1988
• Greatest Winning Margin: 162 points vs Sydney, Round 8, 1993
• Greatest losing margin: 164 points vs Geelong, Round 7, 1992
• Longest Winning Streak: 7 (Round 15 to Round 21, 1996)
• Longest Losing Streak: 12 (Round 20 1990 to Round 10, 1991)
• Most Goals in a Season: 60 by Roger Merrett in 1993 (18 games)
• Most Goals for the Club: 285 by Roger Merrett (1988–96 – 164 games)
• Most Games for the Club: 164 by Roger Merrett (1988–96)
• Most Years as Coach: 5 by Robert Walls (1991–95)
• Most Years as Captain: 7 by Roger Merrett (1990–96)
• Highest Ladder Position at end of season: Third in 1996
• Record Attendance: 66,719 vs North Melbourne, Preliminary Final 1996
• Record Attendance at The Gabba: 21,964 vs Essendon, Qualifying Final 1996
• Record Attendance at Carrara Oval: 18,198 vs Geelong, Round 15, 1989
• Brownlow Medalists: Michael Voss in 1996
• All-Australians Michael Voss and Craig Lambert in 1996