Brisbane Bears
Brisbane Bears
It comes as a shock that to the modern day football fan that Queenslands number 1 winter sport was football. But that was last century. The Queensland Football Association was formed in 1879, and it was a great success. A thriving competition grew and grew around Brisbane.
In 1883 Queensland sent a team to the Intercolonial Football Conference in Melbourne. By 1884 it was estimated that there were 339 football clubs and 212 schools playing football. At this time there were only 22 rugby clubs. Football was played in the all the major football secondary schools.
Even in the late 1886 not many school boys knew the rules of rugby. Queensland took part in the first Australian Football Carnival, in Melbourne in 1908. Queensland was so highly regarded as a football club, that they hosted the 1914 Carnival. The Carnival was again played in Queensland in 1950, but by this time rugby was more popular than football.
Through the years there has been a number of football exhibitions played in Queensland. As part of the VFL’s promotional round in 1952, Essendon played Geelong at the Brisbane Exhibition Oval for premiership points.
When the VFL decided that it would go national at the end of the 1986 season, there was plenty of interest from Queensland with three different groups showing an interest in putting a Brisbane team into the VFL. At one stage the VFL were thinking of asking Fitzroy to relocate up north.
In the end it came down to two syndicates. One was headed by Paul Cronin and the QAFL (Queensland Australian Football League), the other was lead by John Brown, the Former Australian Tennis Open promoter.
The VFL commission decided to go with Brown’s group, but most Melbourne clubs believed that the QAFL-Cronin group would have been able to produce the $4 million required up front. While the group was trying to raise the money, it struck troubled waters. In November 1986 Christopher Skase stepped in and helped out with the money needed. Three years late it was revealed that the original $4 million was owed to the bank which had lent it to Skase.
The second weird decision that the new club made was that the new club was to play all it’s home games at Carrara on the Gold Coast, rather than at Brisbane. At first the move to Carrara was supposed to be temporary, but Skase made the move permanent. If the club didn’t play at Carrara, he would have withdrawn his financial support, this would have crippled the new club.
Brisbane’s first team was mostly ex-Victorian players that had been dumped from their first club.
The club moved to the GABBA in 1993, and it introduced a new jumper in 1992. The 1995 finals was Brisbane’s first.
In Brief
Joined League: 1987
Premierships: 0
Brownlow Medallists: Michael Voss (1996)
Mergered: with Fitzory at the end of the 1996 season.
