Remember Geoff Raines, ex-Richmond champion who was one of the original Brisbane Bears? He played 59 games with the club from 1987-89 after stints at Collingwood and Essendon and owns the oldest record in the combined Brisbane club history.

Raines has polled more Brownlow Medal votes for Brisbane in games against Richmond than any other Brisbane player. And he only played five times for the club against the Tigers.

“Really? I can’t believe that,” said the long-striding centreman with a raking long kick and a great of his era when told recently. “Maybe I felt I had something to prove.”

No doubt he did after a pay dispute with Richmond saw him traded to Collingwood at the end of 1982 after seven years, 134 games, three B&F awards and a key role in the 1980 premiership. And he did it extraordinary well.

Two votes in Round 8 1987 at Carrara, when he had 31 possessions and a goal as the Bears beat the Tigers by 35 points. And two votes in Round 22 at the MCG, when the Bears won by 56 points in the wooden spoon grand final. He had 22 possessions and kicked two goals as the Tigers finished last for only the fourth time in club history.

In Round 11 1988 when the Bears beat the Tigers by 48 points at Carrara Raines earned three votes for 28 possessions and a goal despite Warwick Capper’s eight goals. And in Round 20, when they made it four in a row by 14 points at the MCG, he picked up three votes for 25 possessions and three goals.

He played only once more for Brisbane against Richmond, in Round 11 1989 when the Tigers won 5-15 to 3-8 in the wet at the MCG in what was Marcus Ashcroft’s third game for the Bears. He retired at the end of the season at 32 a 254-game AFL champion.

Michael Voss and Simon Black, who played 18 times for Brisbane against Richmond, are next best in votes against the Tigers with seven. So yes, Raines, now 66 and living in a magnificent home on Currumbin Ridge that he bought during his Bears days, made his point emphatically.

“Was I pleased I ended up a four-club player? No. That wasn’t the plan. But was I unhappy I finished with Brisbane? Not at all. I’m proud of what we started and it’s part of the reason we’re up here enjoying the sunshine.”

Runner-up by a single vote in the first two years of the Brisbane club championship, to Phillip Walsh in 1987 and Mark Withers in 1988, Raines, a member of the Richmond Team of the Century, was the Bears’ oldest player overall in his three years at Carrara. And the best.

He was 32 years 317 days old when he became the fourth player to play 50 games for the club behind Walsh, Brad Hardie and Mike Richardson in Round 13 1989, and 34 years on he is still the club’s oldest 50-gamer.

It was all part of a post-script to a magnificent career he hadn’t planned on. He was all set to retire at the end of a 1986 season in which he played two games at Collingwood and 14 games at Essendon after a mid-season trade which he later admitted was a mistake.

“I was done until one day Peter Knights (coach) and Shane O’Sullivan (football manager) knocked on the door and asked I wanted to pioneer footy in Brisbane. And it was great. My body had let me down for a few years and yet when I got up here in the sun all of a sudden I was fine.”

The ultra-smooth #4 was the first of three members of the Raines family to link with the club. Son Nick was a rookie in 2002-03 without being able to break into the triple premiership side, and son Andrew played 67 games with the club from 2010-14 after 56 games at Richmond (2004-09) and before six games with the Gold Coast (2015).

He and wife Lynne are now grandparents to four children from Nick (1), Andrew (1) and Josh (2). And while they still have a house in Melbourne and visit regularly, the Gold Coast is home. It’s just too cold down there, he says.

He attended the 60^th birthday of ex-Bears teammate Hardie in October last year, is still close to former Collingwood, Essendon and Brisbane teammate Richardson, who lives in Perth, and enjoys occasional catch-ups with a host of other ex-Bears.

Will he be at the Gabba on Thursday night. “Probably not – I don’t go much these days – but I’ll be watching on TV for sure,” said Raines, who is still an annoyingly young-looking 66-year-old despite a few grey hairs.

Raines and Walsh, members of the first Bears side, are two of just nine players in 34 years to play for Brisbane and Richmond. Craig Lambert followed in 1994, winning the now Merrett/Murray Medal in his first season, before Rory Hilton, pick #3 to the Bears in the 1996 National Draft, went the other way in 1999. He was followed by Queenslanders Shane Morrison and Like Weller in 2004, and Trent Knobel, who started at Brisbane and went to St.Kilda before finishing at Richmond. Andrew Raines was the eighth when he moved north in 2010 and was followed by Queenslander and ex-Tiger teammate Luke McGuane in 2014.