It’s not true, because sometimes there is no dawn. Just ask the Bears.

At the start of 1999 nobody at the Bears could have guessed their death was creeping up behind them. Nobody in rugby league would have thought it.

Losing Greg Florimo created a void that could never be filled, but Ben Ikin agreed to stick around for one more year after nearly walking out on the club, Matt Seers had a successful stint in rehab and was raring to go, Queensland State of Origin hooker Jamie Goddard joined the club and they still had the stars they’d always had – sure, Billy Moore, Gary Larson and David Fairleigh weren’t as young as they were, but they could still do the job.

Jason Taylor was still a human metronome at halfback, Michael Buettner and Brett Dallas were still a couple of the fastest things on two legs. This was still a team with plenty to offer.

Plus they’d have their glittering new palace up at the Central Coast. Once Grahame Park was fully refurbished it would be filled with a new generation of Bears fans, offering a sheer number of supporters what North Sydney just couldn’t match anymore.

With the revenue and crowd spike, the Bears would easily qualify for the NRL’s streamlined, 14-team competition in 2000. The league had set up a list of criteria clubs had to meet to merit inclusion, which was based on crowd numbers, financial turnover and on-field success over the five years prior.

If you made it, you’d be welcomed into the new century. If you didn’t you got a shake of the hand and a dagger in the gut. The NRL called it “rationalisation”, a bloodless term for a bloody business.

But the Bears wouldn’t have to worry about that. They were all set up.

“It was a growth area, the Central Coast. So many of our juniors came from up there, they tried hard with the north shore comp but it just wasn’t growing,” Soden said.

“We were all still very hungry. But you do get older, and you try to make it up by being wiser because you’re not as youthful anymore.

“I can’t remember for one second any of us getting sick of each other, or getting tired of playing, or tired of their love for Norths. A couple of blokes moved on, but those things happen.”

The first sign that things weren’t as perfect as they seemed came in late January when Peter Louis, who’d coached the Bears to more wins and more finals series than any other coach in their history, announced the 1999 season would be his last with the club.

Ever since the preliminary final defeat in 1997 there’d been rumours the players had grown stale under Louis, just as they had under Steve Martin before him. No Bear would ever speak poorly of Louis, who was well-liked and respected, but the man himself admitted the time was right to walk away.

“By the end of the year, it will be time for me to move on,” Louis told Cameron Bell of The Daily Telegraph in January of 1999.

“I’ve been here for a while now, and I’m struggling to come up with new ideas.

“The biggest thing is variety and I’m a bit short on different things to do, so it’s time to move.

“The Norths club have been terrific to me. They gave me my start in first grade and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

Then it started raining in Gosford, and it seemed like it would never stop.

The Central Coast experienced record rainfall in 1999, and it all but drowned the Bears. When I say records, I mean records – it was officially the wettest year since records began.

The rain meant delays on the upgrades to Graeme Park, which meant Norths couldn’t play there, and given they’d severed ties to North Sydney Oval it meant they didn’t have a home at all.

It wasn’t just rain – there was industrial action over site and safety disputes and blunders with the construction. The opening day was pushed back and pushed back and pushed back again, and the Bears had to play on the road the whole time.

Things started out all right – they won three of their first four matches – but then spiralled quickly, as the Bears lost six straight and plummeted down the ladder. They played at Suncorp and Stadium Australia and Parramatta, all over the place, but nobody showed up to watch them.

Their Round 3 clash against the Cowboys in Brisbane drew a measly crowd of 3382. The year they were supposed to be putting down new roots turned into a nomadic and seemingly endless march around the rugby league world.

“Our home ground was a big advantage for us, simply because it was so hard for away players to get their bearings,” Buettner said.

“They lose perspective of where the lines are on the field. We knew where to aim, where to run, where to position yourself, and they didn’t

“We loved playing there, and not being at our spiritual home was really tough.”

Larson was dropped halfway through the year. It was the first time he’d played reserve grade in nine years, and he considered retiring before Fairleigh talked him out of it. Soden couldn’t get a start either, with the coaches preferring Goddard, and the veteran rake was told he wouldn’t be re-signed for 2000.

“Like we were the changing of the guard those years before, there had to be another one,” Soden said.

“This time we were getting changed out. We were the old ones.”

The generation that was once new had become old themselves, and the cycle was beginning again. Now the old warriors of the 90s were the ones feeling the heat.

“I don’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing, but we had a very stable squad for so long,” Moore said.

“None of us ever got hurt, why would you look to drop or change a side that kept winning?

“There was some natural turnover, but by the time we got to 99 that squad had aged to a point where we weren’t competitive anymore.”

The cracks were starting to appear – one particular low point was a 37-8 loss to Canberra in front of a crowd of bugger all out at Sydney’s new Olympic stadium.

“We gave up today on a few things we wanted to do,” said Louis after the match.

“Half the players are playing for themselves, half are playing to the game plan.”

Mike Colman, an old Bear from way back, took the gloves off in The Courier-Mail later that week.

“The Bears are homeless, rudderless, and pretty close to hopeless,” Colman wrote.

“Yesterday I read the Bears were considering moving back to North Sydney Oval until their new home at Grahame Park, Gosford, was ready.

“As a former staunch North Sydney supporter and North Sydney Oval regular, I ask – why?

“Do the Bears really think they can just go back to North Sydney and ask their former loyal fans to pack the stands – until it’s time to desert them again?

“They should also change their name. They aren’t the North Sydney Bears any more. They’re not sure what they are, but they certainly don’t have anything to do with North Sydney.

“Maybe they should call themselves the ‘Anywhere That Will Have Us Bears’.”

By the middle of May, a farcical situation unfolded with the coaches. Assistant Keiran Dempsey became the “hands on” coach, running the team through their paces at training and formulating game plans while Louis was reduced to dealing with the media and assisting Dempsey with picking the team. Graham Murray was supposed to take over for 2000.

The Bears limped on like this for six weeks before Louis quit and Dempsey took over the whole deal for the last few months of the season.

There were some bright spots – a return to North Sydney Oval against Balmain in Round 13 turned into a record 64-12 victory, breaking the losing streak, but these gems were few and far between. From Round 7 to Round 24 the Bears won two matches, and their finals hopes were dead long before the playoffs began.

The Bears never played a game in Gosford, and came home to North Sydney Oval to die.

They rallied to win their final two matches of the season. In their last home game, they upset Melbourne 24-20, and left Bear Park as winners.

Then it was up to Townsville, were they beat the lowly Cowboys. Taylor scored two tries, including the last one of the match. Larson got on the scoresheet as well, and Soden made the most of his farewell by knocking over the only goal of his career.

“It was a perfect storm in what ended up being our demise. We were trying to build the ground in Gosford, and you could see what we were trying to do, but Mother Nature just killed us,” Moore said.

“We all left Sydney to assimilate into the Central Coast, so the locals would buy in, so we all rented or sold our houses and we ended up having to drive back every week. You couldn’t get a worse situation.

“We stopped playing well, the coach got sacked, there was speculation as to which clubs would live and die, off that bullshit criteria.

“It was the worst period I ever had at the club. We felt lost, like the spirit of the Bears had disappeared.”

The on-field failures were compounded by the ongoing battle for the club’s future. The guarantee of survival on the Central Coast had now vanished, and the unthinkable option was already being considered.

In an effort to cut the number of Sydney teams, the NRL had guaranteed any merged club a place in their competition for 2000. Norths had light discussions with Wests and Balmain, but they were always linked to Manly. The two clubs played their final local derby in Round 20 at North Sydney Oval. The Sea Eagles won 28-22 and it was called “the buck’s party”.

“When we charged up the freeway to Gosford, we were led to believe that was the future for the Bears. We won’t lose our identity, we’ll just pick up the Central Coast and play a game or two at North Sydney Oval,” Moore said.

“We weren’t stupid, it’s still what they want to do now. It was the right idea, we just got bent over.

“Some people at the top of North Sydney got outfoxed by people who lied and cheated. The powerbrokers got the better of North Sydney because they were too upfront and honest.

“We didn’t realise we were in harm’s way until it was too late, because the people that led us down that road were duped.

“I never thought we’d be gone until right at the death, when the sword of Damocles was hanging over our heads.

“Why the hell would you leave North Sydney to go to the Central Coast without a guarantee?

“You’d have to be a moron beyond all belief. For all the shortcomings our board and administrators may have had, they weren’t stupid enough to go up that freeway without some sort of indication they’d be safe.

“Obviously they didn’t get an iron-clad guarantee, but even so – we put ourselves in harm’s way and harm found us.”

By September, things had become critical and the two clubs were actively discussing the merger. Calling it a shotgun wedding would have been an insult to shotguns.

Opinions in the media were split as to its viability. The only merger anyone had to go on was St George’s union with Illawarra, which had reaped a grand final appearance for the new Dragons in their very first year.

“Today, Manly and Norths will be dealing with more emotion than a bride’s wedding as they attempt to convince members over the next however many days that a joint venture is the best option for their clubs,” wrote Paul Kent on September 9.

“After all, North Sydney have not trusted Manly or anything about them since before the club was born.

“That was in 1945, when Norths officials agreed on the NSWRL’s plans for a new club to play out of Manly-Warringah, only to then see the Sea Eagles make off with several of Norths’ star players.

“It continued and even grew worse. Ken Irvine later went on to be the greatest North Sydney player, but went to Manly to win his grand finals.

“Cliff Lyons was an ordinary Bear, then a Manly great. Others have followed as they chased bigger dollars and greater glory.

“The Bears taught players what it was like to lose and Manly taught them what it was like to hate it. The only thing the Bears hated was Manly.

“Even at the height of their infamous brawls, Manly and Wests players would often meet after a game. Manly and Norths have never shared any social dances. They were two separate, and too separate, cultures.”

Colman wrote a number of beautiful columns lamenting the death of his club – and that’s how it felt to merge with Manly, life with them was no life at all.

“There was more to being a Norths fan than just losing, there was Manly losing too.

“Sure, you could get beaten by 15, 20, 30 even. But as long as Manly lost too, the day ended up about even.

“And now they tell us they’re merging? The Bears and Manly are going to be one and the same? That if you want to watch Norths play you have to go to Brrr, Brrr, Brook, Brookvvvv … that place?

“I just can’t do it.”

Others backed the merger to work. In a poll of The Daily Telegraph’s journalists, Peter Frilingos, Dean Ritchie, Tony Adams and Tim Prentice all thought it would work.

Ray Chesterton was the lone dissenting voice, and he savaged the Bears all the same.

“Norths have been a cadaver since 1922. Their natural environment is first division,” Chesterton wrote.

“A Manly-Norths union carries too much baggage from years of dissension.”

On September 27 the NRL announced Norths and South Sydney would not qualify for the 2000 competition. The grim truth began to emerge, that the club was broke and Norths were falling apart, choking, dying.

On September 30, Jeff Dunne wrote in The Daily Telegraph that the club was more than $4 million in debt, $2 million of which was player payments. In an effort to get their salaries, most of the playing group gave the merger their support. Chairman Ray Beattie and chief executive Bob Saunders both resigned.

Frank Hyde, a Bears man to the end and a rugby league man forever, believed the choice was no choice at all.

“The Bears are a part of me. Not only is it a part of me now but it has been a part of me for such a long time,” Hyde wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

“I am the only person that has coached them in a grand final, the only player as a captain that has taken them to a grand final.

“I can’t understand how it (the club’s struggles) came out. Someone should have told someone the club was not a bottomless pit.

“I’m thinking in terms of the fellows I played with who are now dead and gone, they must be turning in their graves.

“Without merging, Norths are dead. Under the present circumstances they just cannot, just cannot, exist. So their only option is a merger.”

Mike Gibson was another Bear who let his feelings be known.

“The Bears, the rugby league club that has shattered so many dreams, is bankrupt,” Gibson wrote in The Daily Telegraph on September 30.

“Why? How could a club with one of the most prosperous leagues clubs in the business go belly up?

“How can a football club about to move to a new area, to play at a new stadium which the Federal and State Governments pledged a combined $24 million to build, suddenly announce it is $4 million in the red?

“Some people have a bad week. North Sydney supporters have had a bad century.”

The choice was merge or fight and probably die. A rebel Save The Bears ticket sprung up, headed by former executive David Hill, and Soden was prominently involved but the news was made official on October 1 – Norths and Manly would merge.

Beattie copped the brunt of the fury from supporters – there were plenty of abusive phone calls, and at one point screwdrivers got rammed into his car tires.

“In 1994-95 we were probably the most professional team in the competition, on and off the field. We were headed for glory,” he told Ian Heads of The Daily Telegraph.

“Then Super League came along and we have never recovered, we have been in defensive mode ever since. Our management became reactive rather than proactive.

“Everyone now says we shouldn’t have gone to Grahame Park in 1999.

“The face of it is that we were left with a huge player payment cost after the war. We never could have raised the funds we needed playing at North Sydney. We had to move, had to find new growth opportunities, and we did that with gusto.

“What we couldn’t predict was the rainfall – for three consecutive months the highest in recorded history in that area – plus strikes and construction problems that eventuated at what will be a magnificent stadium.

“And we couldn’t have known that a team which has performed so well would not come up to acceptable standards.”

The Bears had played all their cards. They’d done their dash, played their last game, lost their last final. The long premiership drought which seemed so close to ending would now stretch on for the rest of time. Norths were all out for 91. They were Northern Eagles now.

“It never had a chance,” Soden said.

“There’s a saying for people who get divorced – save time, just marry someone you hate and give them half your house.

“As it was, we married someone we hated and they took the whole house. You didn’t have to be a genius to see it. It was the most stupid decision.

“We originally had all the money, but Manly had all the power, with Bob Fulton, Kerry Packer and Ken Arthurson. I’m sure they said ‘we’ll hang in there and eat these blokes up’, I’m sure of it.”

Eleven Norths players would line up for the Northern Eagles in 2000. Billy Moore wasn’t one of them. At 28, he retired, and went back to Queensland.

“Manly didn’t want a bar of the merger, they just wanted the money they’d get from it,” Moore said.

“Manly’s intentions were a takeover, an absorption of Norths, that’s why it was never going to work.

“The supporters all hated each other’s guts, they despised each other. It never could have possibly worked.

“It was a sad and unfortunate thing, because I felt like we’d let the North Sydney public down, all those valued supporters who bought into the North Sydney dream and worn our colours and emblem with pride and copped shit for so long, I felt for them.

“I was happy to pack up my car and leave, I didn’t want to play for anyone but the Bears. I was only 28 – I didn’t know life would be as hard once I left rugby league.

“The next two years were terrible to me, and once I was out I couldn’t go back.

“The boys did organise a thing for me in the January of the next year, I think JT lined it up, which was nice of them, because I’d left so quickly.

“I’m quite hard on myself and the players in that demise, cause if we won football games it probably wouldn’t have happened.

“You can’t ever move away from that simple, cold hard fact, and if players don’t believe that then they are wrong. We win, we’re alive – it’s as simple as that.”

Seers didn’t stick around either, signing a deal with another merged club, Wests Tigers. Larson spent a year with the Eels, Fairleigh played on for one more season with the Knights, Ikin got the move to Brisbane he wanted and won a premiership. Brett Dallas went to England to play for Wigan, Mark Soden went around the way to play for Belrose.

“As soon as that Manly thing happened, it chopped me off at the knees,” Soden said.

“I went up and watched but I felt so not wanted, so alienated. You’re not welcome in the sheds, you’re not a Northern Eagle.

“That last year, 99, was horrible, but 2000 was just as horrible cause we weren’t there.

“I still love the game, it was just a horrible time. I’ve had two clubs in my life, Dubbo and North Sydney.

“I have four boys and they can never go watch an NRL game and say ‘my Dad was a part of this club’, that’s what makes me sour.

“I just thought it was so unfortunate, for a club that had been around for such a long time.

“A lot of people like the sparkly new car rather than the old rusty one, but the old rusty one can be worth a lot once it’s done up.”

Buettner and Taylor were two of the 11 Bears players who became Northern Eagles. They made the best of it they could, but both were out the door at the end of that first season.

“No, not a chance in the world, it was never going to work. It’s two bitter rivals who loved playing against each other because they were rivals,” Buettner said.

“I never thought it was going to work, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was impossible to ask two bitter rivals to be really chummy all of a sudden.

“You’ve got to bear in mind, this was brought on after the ‘99 season. We’re going into a pre-season in November, three months earlier we’d played against these blokes and hated them.

“That’s tough to deal with, and we’re all professional and we tried to work together, but I wasn’t surprised when it wrapped up two or three years later.

“I wasn’t really comfortable with the merger and the way it all turned out. I felt like if my heart wasn’t in it I shouldn’t be there to bring other players down.

“I played a season there and gave it my all, but I had to go back to Parra.”

The two old Bears found each other again at the Eels, another club which knows a thing or two about yearning for a glory which may never come, and they made it all the way to the grand final in Taylor’s last year in first grade. They lost, but Buettner still says the week before and after the match was the best fortnight of his career.

The Northern Eagles didn’t last. A sellout crowd greeted them for their first match, when they finally took the field in Gosford and beat Newcastle in a dream debut. But that was as good as it got. Taylor was dropped halfway through that first year, ending a run of consecutive first grade matches that stretched back to 1992.

The Manly people wanted theirs, the Norths people wanted theirs and the Central Coast wanted a team for the Central Coast, not one that lived down the freeway for half the year. It was too much, too many people pulling in too many directions.

By 2002, the writing was on the wall. Gosford was abandoned halfway through the year, their last game drawing just over 6000 people. Jamie Goddard was the only player from the Bears who played first grade that year. Manly reclaimed the license for 2003, and Norths were left to pick up the pieces where they could.

The Bears live on in New South Wales Cup, and in the junior competitions. Since returning from England, Florimo has become the club’s beating heart once again. Plenty of people have given plenty of time, effort and money to keep the Bears alive, but Florimo is the club’s greatest champion, filling every role imaginable.

“You look at that team and it was a majority maroon. The boardroom was majority maroon. There were still games at Brookvale Oval, nothing at North Sydney. I thought it was one-sided,” said Florimo.

“I came back at the end of 2000 and went straight back on to the board of directors.

“I haven’t been timekeeper at North Sydney Oval and I haven’t worked in the canteen, that’s about it.”

Plenty of the players were soured on rugby league after what happened with the Bears, but most of them have come back in the end. The good times wash out the bad, and the dream of a return to first grade still lives on. A season never goes by without talk of the Bears returning, be it in Perth, Brisbane or even at the home they never had, the Central Coast.

“It helped me moving away from rugby league not seeing the Bears on TV. But I lost my identity with rugby league for five or six years, I had nothing to do with it cause I was so dirty on the sport,” Moore said.

“You can’t play the victim card, you have to move on.

“And hopefully, hopefully, I can play a part somehow in getting the Bears back into the comp, and maybe that can appease the pain the Bears fans felt.

“For me, I don’t give a rat’s arse how we get back as long as we get back, I don’t care what shape or form, and I don’t care if we play in Timbuktu.

“Seeing the Bear emblem, the red and black jerseys, that’s what matters.”

Taylor returned to the Bears this season, taking over as coach of the NSW Cup side.

“The biggest thing I think back on with my time with the Bears was how quick those seasons went, how few losses we had, how there was disappointment at the end of the season, but the effort and camaraderie that went into it was second to none,” he said.

“We had the time of our lives, we absolutely ripped into it but made so many great memories along the way.”

Seers has endured some tough times in his post-football life, but was present at this year’s Old Boys day, and when the old Bears get together they only talk about the good times. The losses, the near misses, the horrible end, that doesn’t need to come up.

“We don’t really talk about it, we just know,” Seers said.

“We know how unlucky we were, and how close we came.”

There’s no more Bears running around in first grade, and there hasn’t been for a while. Mark O’Meley, a baby ogre back in 1999, was the last of them and he’s been out of the NRL for 10 years.

The Bears now live in memory, and in the bonds that the players and fans still share together. A person lives as long as the last person who remembers them, and the Bears are still alive in hearts and minds.

Florimo dreams of a return, like everyone else, but he’s more focused on keeping the club alive at a grassroots level and doing what footy clubs are supposed to do for their district and their people. A club isn’t a team, and the Bears want to be more than some jerseys running around in reserve grade.

“That (the return) is secondary in my mind, it’s more about maintaining the legacy, making sure the young fellas, the young girls who are coming through the ranks, understand what came before them,” Florimo said.

“That stuff lives in perpetuity, that’s always there.

“Even though we’re not in first grade anymore we’re a foundation club with a large district and an obligation from our forbearers to provide a healthy, fun, rugby league program.

“That’s what we do it for, and to work with kids who are so keen to get somewhere, so keen to learn, it’s very rewarding.

“There’s the element of getting back one day, which seems to keep a lot of people bubbling along.

“It’s nice to have the conversation with them and see the energy, it’s nice to have the dream.”

Maybe that glorious return to first grade can come true one day, out west or up north or wherever, and maybe they’ll come back home one day a year, and the hill at North Sydney Oval will swell one more time, and they’ll play Mr. Natural when the Bears kick goals, and there’ll be a late rush from the Percy to the ground, a river of red and black jerseys cramming in to every available space and the whispers will start up that this could be it, this could be the year, that third premiership is coming back to Norths, I just know it.

It’s a vision that might never come to pass. But like Florimo says, the dream lives on, and sometimes dreams are enough. The sun hasn’t risen on a day without hope.

“We remember the good stuff, because there was so much of it,” said Moore.

“There’s years of great stories and victories to remember and laugh about.

“I saw the growth and development of so many wonderful players and young people, I saw the pride the fans had after we’d achieved things for them.

“The greatest experience of my life was to be a Bear, and I’m still very proud of it.”

And even if the Bears breathed their last gasp as an NRL club 20 years ago, that doesn’t change the things that came before, the memories that were shared, the games that were won and the lives the Bears built together.

That’s something that can never be touched, taken, merged or bought.

“A couple of the guys started something, a lunch the Saturday before the grand final. It started out with five blokes and now we’ve got about 20,” Soden said.

“We just laugh, tell funny stories, it’s like a 20-year time warp.

“Everyone’s still mates, we sit around and have a laugh like we used to.”

“It started out with the 90s group, we just sit down and laugh and laugh. If you’re James Packer you can’t buy your way on to that table, because you’ve got to have that association, you’ve got to have played.

“And if you’re James Packer why would you want to be on that table?”