Community & Business
3 October, 2025
Champion Bears Reunite
Eight members of Oakey’s champion 1975 rugby league squad reunited at the Oakey RSL on Sunday, 50 years after they brought back the TRL premiership west down the Warrego Highway.
Eight years after entering the competition with the other ‘country clubs’ - Millmerran, Pittsworth and Wattles - Oakey had made consecutive Grand Finals in 1973-74, losing to Newtown and Pittsworth. Undeterred, the club brought in former Toowoomba and one-time Queensland winger Brian Marks to coach in 1975.
The change worked - Oakey made the Grand Final for a third consecutive year, and this time triumphed, defeating the All Whites side 19-18 in a marathon match which had 30 minutes of extra time. The win started a run of four premierships in six years, and established Oakey as a footballing powerhouse in Toowoomba.
Fifty years later, some members of the team are no longer still around.
Denis ‘Spike’ Wiemers died in 2016, and coach Marks died in 2021.
Some, like legend Peter Connell, are declining in health, while others no longer live in the Toowoomba Region and were unable to make it.
For those that could attend though, it was a chance to catch up over a drink and reminisce about the old days, a time when rugby league football was the only game in town, and just about everyone followed the fortunes of the Bears.
Next week, we take an in-depth look into the players who made up the 1975 team, including ‘the Tara connection’ and catch up with well known sportswriter John Harms of ‘Footy Almanac’ fame, who grew up in Oakey during the halcyon days of the Bears.
