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THE enjoyment Bob Beare got out of playing with his mates at Kyneton far outweighed the lure of a VFL career alongside his idol Paul Vander Haar at Essendon in the '80s.
Beare - who died last week aged 57 - was a Bombers' fanatic and may well have forged a career at the top level such was the esteem in which he was held by Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy.
Beare did play some reserves games for the Bombers during the '80s, but as the saying goes - you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy.
"Sheedy has made a statement that Bobby Beare was the best footballer not to play for Victoria… let alone a senior VFL game," Beare's good mate and former Kyneton team-mate, Mark Tunzi, said this week.
"That's how highly Sheedy rated Bobby; he thought he was skilled enough to play for Victoria.
"Bobby showed the talent from very early that he was good enough to go to a higher level and play. My brother rang Essendon and said there's a kid up here you should have a look at, so they said bring him down.
"He idolised Paul Vander Haar. When we were kids he named himself Vander Beare, so he got the opportunity to train alongside his idol, but that wasn't even enough to get him interested… he just wanted to be with his mates back here and that's why he didn't stay down there.
"But who knows what he could have been had he stayed. I remember going to Victoria Park in '84 to watch Bobby in a reserves game against Collingwood.
"Bobby was playing off half-back that day. He didn't star, but he took some telling marks off half-back and you could see that he fit at the next level and it was only his second or third game down there at Essendon.
"But he just had that loyalty to his mates back home… it was his greatest strength, but also the downfall of his VFL career."
Essendon's loss was most certainly Kyneton's gain.
In a career with the Tigers that began by kicking 10 goals in a game in 1978, Beare played more than 320 games with the club, which included winning back-to-back best and fairests in 1982 and 1983.
Beare's first senior coach at Kyneton was Peter McRae.
"I put him in the seniors when he was 15. He was a fantastic player and a real fanatic about the game," McRae said.
"For such a young kid he was really switched on when it came to strategies and theories… although you couldn't go along with all his theories at times.
"He and Vinnie Szabo would be always down the ground practicing, and then when it would get time for training at 5.30pm they'd be nearly out of petrol tickets before we started.
"I started Bobby on a wing, then eased him into centre half-forward and years later he finished up as a backman. Just a great servant of the game."
However, it's not just Kyneton where Beare left an indelible mark.
Beare also had a strong association with Heathcote after arriving at Barrack Reserve in 1993.
"It was an amazing get for the club when he came to Heathcote… he was a bloke who had an aura about him," Beare's former Saints' team-mate, Des Gilmore, said.
"We had read a lot about him over the years and a few of the blokes had gone to watch him play and he was just a great player for us mainly at centre half-back."
Beare's first three seasons at Heathcote ended in a hat-trick of grand final defeats to arch-rivals Mount Pleasant.
Beare later coached the Saints' senior team, and also had a passion for working with Heathcote's youngsters as under-17 coach for the past four years.
"Bob was like a proud father to all his boys and he was an important introduction to our footballers," the Saints wrote on their Facebook page.
"As a star player from Kyneton, his arrival at the Barrack Reserve was greeted with enthusiasm. A high flyer, his brilliant play could turn a game in a quarter."
Shane Muir - another of Beare's good mates and former Kyneton team-mates - says Beare's ability to connect with young players went far beyond that of just on the football field.
"He knew what to say, but much more than just football-wise. If a young player had a blue with his parents or something like that he'd be able to help work it out and he just had that gift of the gab," Muir said.
Added Tunzi: "I was told of a story where one of the young Heathcote boys said he hadn't spoken to his father for a couple of years, but Bob got them back talking again and now they get on really well. He said he'll never forget what Bob did for him and that was just the type of guy he was.
"It wasn't just coaching the kids on how to play the game of footy; he coached the kids on how to live life."
It wasn't just coaching the kids on how to play the game of footy; he coached the kids on how to live life.
- Mark Tunzi
Beare also had an affinity with Trentham - and it was there that he finally savoured the long-awaited first premiership that had eluded him until the age of 50.
That was in 2011 when Beare was the playing coach of Trentham's reserves team that defeated Carisbrook by one point - a game in which he was among the Saints' best players, with his ability to read the play remaining one of his key attributes well into the twilight of his career.
"People have said to me that up until a couple of years ago they've seen this bloke running around in the seconds up the bush and just had to go out in the huddle to see who it was because he was reading the play so well," Tunzi said.
"And that was Bobby… he'd let people run off him and do whatever they want, but the ball would end up in his hands all the time."
Beare had endured the disappointment of playing in eight losing grand finals before his 2011 success at Trentham.
"He just kept missing out on winning one and then he finally got one aged 50, which was fantastic for him after so long," Muir said.
Beare played 123 reserves games over seven years at Trentham, starting at a time when the club was on the brink of folding, while his name is also on the Bendigo league's McDonald Medal honour roll as reserves best and fairest following his return to Kyneton in 1999 to coach the reserves.
A fearless competitor on the football field, off it Beare was known for two phobias.
"Bobby wasn't scared of anything - apart from bulls or leeches," Beare's mate Anthony O'Connor said.
"If there was a bull in the paddock he didn't want any part of it. He was the type of bloke who would put his hand down a snake hole and pull a snake out by its tail, but he was petrified of bulls and leeches."
Almost 40 years on from his first game at Kyneton in 1978, Beare took to the field for the last time in his mid-50s for the Heathcote reserves in a game at home against Colbinabbin in July of 2017.
"He obviously had a fantastic footy career, but away from that he loved a drink with his mates, attracted the women and loved a punt," Tunzi said.
"He was one of those blokes who always had a different system of how to find a winner on the punt."
The Kyneton Racing Club will honour Beare at its April 27 meeting with one of the races on the card named the Bob Beare Memorial.
Beare is survived by his daughter Monique and granddaughter Charlotte.
Meanwhile, the death of Beare was the second blow in just over a week for the Tigers following the recent passing also of Maurize "Mozza" Smith.
After more than 150 games in the seniors and reserves for the Tigers, Smith then spent 42 years as the Tigers' head trainer.
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