Like his father Jack, Robert Oatey was a top class rover, boasting intelligence, skill and tenacity in sufficient measure to enable him, arguably, to fall only narrowly short of true champions' stature. As a youngster he had actually been better at baseball than football, but, preferring the latter, he stuck at it, and gradually improved. Whilst at Norwood Boys' High School he spent four seasons as a member of the first eighteen, two of them as captain. Late in 1960 he began playing with Norwood's Thirds team, ultimately helping them to the premiership. His league career commenced the following season and ended in 1978, during which time he played 232 games for Norwood, 69 for Sturt, and 9 for South Australia. During his peak years of the late 1960s and early '70s he won Norwood's best and fairest award four times, was runner-up in the 1968 Magarey Medal, and on three occasions topped his club's goal kicking list. Such achievements are all the more remarkable when you consider that, between 1968 and 1973, he was also Norwood's coach, not with any conspicuous success it must be said, but in hindsight it is possible to discern how the framework for the club's noteworthy achievements under Bob Hammond and Neil Balme was constructed under Oatey. A skills-orientated coach like his father, he recognised the importance of a sound developmental infrastructure, and it was during Oatey's tenure as coach that the ultimately highly successful 'Norwood Academy' for young players was inaugurated.

After being controversially dumped as Norwood coach after steering the side to 4th place in 1973 Robert Oatey crossed to his father's club, Sturt, where he finished his career as a player. In 1974 he was a member of the Blues team which defeated Glenelg in the first ever grand final to be played at Football Park.

*Courtesy of John Devaney at www.fullpointsfooty.net

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