The old Lion roars again as Fitzroy is reborn

THE AFL may have sent the Fitzroy Lions to Brisbane in a near-farcical amalgamation 12 years ago, but it was never able to kill the Fitzroy spirit.

Fitzroy Football Club somehow survived, at least in name, those hellish events of 1996. And, as of 7.30pm yesterday, it was reborn.

From next year, Fitzroy - technically the same Fitzroy that won eight premierships in its 1897-1996 life in the VFL and AFL - will field a senior team in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.

A board meeting at a hotel in Fairfield last night saw FFC Ltd agree to merge with VAFA D1-Section club Fitzroy Reds to form, simply, Fitzroy.

The famous maroon and blue colours with the equally famous gold FFC logo will be worn, and matches will be played at the original home ground of 125 years ago, the Brunswick St Oval in Fitzroy North, where Haydn Bunton, Kevin Murray, Wilfred "Chicken" Smallhorn, Denis "Dinny" Ryan, Allan Ruthven and Alan "Butch" Gale were warriors.

News of the return of Fitzroy delighted Bill Stephen, a grand old Roy Boy who won the second of two best-and-fairests in 1954, was captain-coach in 1955-57, and coach from 1965-1970, and 1979-80.

"This is a great thing for the old club," Stephen said. "It was gone for all money and that left a lot of us very sad and quite bitter for some time.

"You move on from that, of course, and we have moved on, but it was a very nasty way for the club to finish.

"Fitzroy was once the glamour team of the league. We had seven premierships by the early 1920s, which was more than any club."

The merger will have no bearing on the Brisbane Lions.

Craig Little, who last night became the new club's president, said he had told Brisbane Lions chief executive Michael Bowers that Fitzroy would again be active in the Amateurs.

 "This will not impact on Brisbane. It is not a threat to Brisbane. In fact, Brisbane will now have something that no other AFL club has - a living embodiment of what once was, with the club playing at its old ground," Little said.

"This can actually be a value-add for Brisbane.

"Everyone associated with Brisbane should come down to the Brunswick St Oval and see where it all began, and get a great appreciation for what Fitzroy is and what has happened to it."

FFC has made regular, small profits in the past 10 years, and has sponsored the Reds (originally the University Reds) during that period.

Bill Atherton, instrumental in keeping alive not just the Fitzroy Football Club name but also its spirit through his tireless work at The Fitzroy Shop based in Moorabbin, said last night's development would be looked back on as a proud moment in the club's life.

"The Lion went to the Gabba, but the Fitzroy Football Club kept its spirit and went back to Brunswick St Oval to help the kids, and now it's back," Atherton said.

"This is huge. Here is a football club that went through the messiest and ugliest and most hurtful of events in 1996, but it just kept on going.

"We weren't blameless in what happened, we know that, and in the end we couldn't help ourselves, but we had a great hope of one day finding a way back, and through a passion that goes back generations, and also through a lot of patience, we have achieved something that is very significant.

"The time is right for us to come back, and we are back, and we are going to be making a very serious contribution to grassroots footy."

Fitzroy won its eighth and last flag in 1944.

There were relatively good years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including finishing one game off top spot in 1983 and making a preliminary final in 1986.

It was an era when, like the 1920s and '30s, glamour was synonymous with the club, as Paul Roos, Gary Pert, Bernie Quinlan, Garry Wilson, Richard Osborne, Alastair Lynch and Micky Conlan kept the wins coming.

But there was never enough money, and the club ceased to exist as we knew it after Round 22 of the 1996 season.

Depending which camp you're in, Fitzroy either died then or it merged with Brisbane.

Some Roy Boy diehards shunned the merger initially and have warmed to it since; some will never acknowledge there is a piece of Fitzroy in Brisbane.

Last night's meeting endorsed Dyson Hore-Lacy and Elaine Findlay respectively as the new club's chair and deputy chair.

Hore-Lacy and Findlay, who in the late 1980s became the first female to be appointed to a VFL-AFL club's board, were in those positions during the ugly events of 1996, and retained them during the past 12 years.

Little, taking on the new position of president, said the return of the old Fitzroy to its old ground would appeal to a wide range of people.

"As the AFL gets bigger and bigger and played by huge corporate entities, the fans' relationship with the teams remains passionate, but not intimate," Little said.

"Local footy doesn't have a poster boy. What I believe we can do is build this club up as an example of sorts of what local footy really should be about, and bring back a lot of what made footy great."

Part of that pledge, Little said, would be the scheduling of Fitzroy matches at 2pm on a Saturday.

"Fitzroy seemed to be everyone's second team, so what we say to those people is if your (AFL) team is not playing on a Saturday afternoon, and let's face it, it probably won't be, come down to Brunswick St and see where it all began."

Asked what the club's nickname would be, Little said: "The Roy Boys, that's what I am expecting will stick. Everyone loves the Roy Boys."