Sport
12 July, 2024
Injury list continues to mount for Bears
Oakey’s injury woes continued as Gatton comfortably won both the A Grade and Reserves clashes at Cahill Park.
Always a tough road trip to head down the range to play the high flying Gatton Hawks, the Bears had to pull together with a next man up mentality following the past few months of mounting injuries.
With a total of fourteen A Graders out with injury (six for the rest of season) and a further seven unavailable, the coaches managed to scrape together a group of committed players.
A Grade
A Grade was severely depleted with basically a whole side unavailable with injury, however the team took the field with thirteen fresh men (many stepping up from Reserve Grade the previous week) and another four backing up to play two games.
It was an arm wrestle for the first twenty minutes, but from there the lack of experience and usual combinations showed, with untimely errors, penalties and one on one missed tackles hurting the Bears badly on the scoreboard.
Gatton took advantage of a period of play where the Bears were down to 11 men, the game getting away from Oakey.
The Bears toiled away and managed to score a try through a good passage of play, with Kaleb Cooper crossing the stripe.
Best players for Oakey were Jack Schilf, Kaleb Cooper, Wes Aumau and Nuggo Dowling.
Gatton: 70 (Tom Luhrman 4, Luke Self 2, Ben Haviland, Blake Appo, Travis Turnbull, Cameron Bundock, Shannon Hicks, Olly Bichel, Tye Gray tries Shannon Hicks 9 goals
Oakey: 6 (Kaleb Cooper try Jeremiah Pati goal)
Reserve Grade
Reserve Grade took to the field with 17 players, and faced a stacked Gatton side with six A Grade players returning from injury.
Despite the uphill battle, the Bears battled hard, however too many untimely and unforced errors cost them dearly.
Being down 36-nil at half time, it would have been easy for the reserve grade side to give in.
The second half was a better affair with the scoreline 14-0.
Unfortunately young up and coming player Sam Jackson was hurt badly with ten minutes to go and escorted to hospital.
Our best wishes go out to Sam for a speedy recovery.
Best players were Dean McIntosh, Cooper Prosser, Justin DeCaux and a shout out to Greg Ryan for playing injured from last wee
Gatton: 50 (Allan Morris 3, Tye Gray 2, Ethan Dowie, Jone Murikdomona, Foster Sese, Sione Foueti, Hayden Dunn tries Jagan Swan 4, James Schroeder goals)
Oakey: 0
Women
Unfortunately the hard decision was made to forfeit the Ladies game, as due to player unavailability and injuries, the ladies only had ten players to play.
Player welfare was given priority, so the ladies are now super determined to regroup for the upcoming home game.
Upcoming
Hopefully with the week off due to representative football this coming weekend, the Bears should see the return of a few players for our last Saturday night Home Game against Dalby on the 20th July.
Please all come down to the Den to support the Men’s and Ladies’ teams!
There will be live music afterwards with the bar and barbecue open!
Only five games remain for the season, with three at home in Oakey.
Special shoutout to Kodi Federoff, who had surgery for his injury last week. Speedy recovery mate, you join a long list of season ending injuries to the Bears this year, but we know you boys will bounce back next season.
- Doles (Brendan Dolan)
