In defeat we’ll always try

Death by a thousand cuts

– A form of torture and execution originating from Imperial China

 

I’ve always been bitter about North Melbourne’s failed merger with Fitzroy in 1996.  That infamous chapter in VFL/AFL history, along with the player and salary cap concessions Brisbane received in the ensuing years, made me hate the new club, the Brisbane Lions.

Leading up to the proposed merger, when it was clear the Lions were broke and the AFL wouldn’t support them, all I could think about was North and what it would mean to my club.  When the merger was foiled at the eleventh hour I pondered the injustice.  It took weeks before I spared a thought for Fitzroy.

In 1996, in an effort to watch more football, I became a simultaneous member, of North Melbourne and the Brisbane Bears.  The Bears were playing their first full season at the Gabba.  I just wanted to watch football, I didn’t join the Bears because of any affinity for the club.  I’ve admitted that anomaly to very few people over the years. 

Before the 1997 season, a former Victorian called Jamie lobbed in Brisbane for a few weeks.  Aged 27, he’d followed Fitzroy all his life, his loyalty derived from his father’s love for a hopeless club.  Jamie had never seen his club win a premiership, nor had his father.  It didn’t matter.  His love ran deep.  With grim determination, he talked about money, a donation made to the club when it was in complete crisis, unable to pay its players or administration.

‘My father and I donated money,’ he said.  ‘I’m not telling you how much.’  Rolling up his sleeve, he showed the Fitzroy emblem on his left arm, the most magnificent tattoo I’ve seen.  ‘I love Fitzroy,’ he said.

‘Are you going to follow the Brisbane Lions?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Jamie said.  ‘That’s it for us.’

Before the 1997 season, I received a membership offer from the newly formed Brisbane Lions.  The cost to watch 11 home games was $110.  A few days later the same package arrived from North Melbourne, a membership costing $75.  I called Brisbane’s new administration, asking why the discrepancy. 

The woman who answered the phone either didn’t know why or wasn’t going to answer the question.  ‘Call Ross Oakley,’ the woman said and gave me the number.

‘Sure,’ I said to her.  ‘Ross Oakley’s going to talk to me.’

I never made the call.  North got my money that year.  It was clear, given the $35 difference, the AFL wanted to extract what it could from Brisbane fans who were clamouring to join the new entity.

On grand final day, 2001, I watched in admiration as thousands of ecstatic Fitzroy fans clad in decades old guernseys, celebrated the merged club’s first premiership.  Clearly, for every traditional Fitzroy fan who spurned the new club, a traditional fan embraced it.  It was no different when Brisbane defeated Collingwood in the 2002 grand final.  Most gratifying was watching the old Lions fans, those with grey hair who were kids in 1944, when Fitzroy won their last premiership.

At the time, the Lions were getting an average crowd at the Gabba of more than 30-thousand people.  A few weeks ago the Lions attracted 18,000 fans to the Gabba for the match against North Melbourne.  They have less than 7000 Melbourne members.  Everything I’ve ever seen in the years since the failed merger has convinced me Fitzroy should’ve merged with North.  I’ve read extensively about the reasons why, and understand, on a pragmatic level, why it happened.  Until the weekend, I believed the AFL clearly got the merger wrong.

Fifteen years on, the merger still makes no sense.  Most Brisbane-based fans could care less about Fitzroy.  Most Brisbane-based fans live in Brisbane and identify with the local team.  Fitzroy’s history, for many, is meaningless.

I can’t predict what my attitude would’ve been if Fitzroy merged with North Melbourne.  All I was concerned about at the time was what it meant to my club.  Having been indoctrinated with the North Melbourne Kangaroos, I didn’t like the possible name for the new club, the North Fitzroy Kangaroos.

I just didn’t like it, because, money aside, and though Fitzroy attracted few fans in their last few seasons, I couldn’t understand why the AFL was so intent on getting rid of a foundation club.

Since the reunion with Jamie in 1997, and despite Fitzroy getting toasted in the Arden Street Bar, rum in a fatalistic shot glass owned by my mate Adam G, I’ve never had to confront the death of the Fitzroy Lions beyond the brief.

On Sunday, Radio National’s program Hindsight featured a documentary called In Defeat We’ll Always Try – the Death of the Fitzroy Lions.  The documentary, by one-eyed Lion’s fan Jack Kerr, forced the listener to confront the murder.  If you’ve never thought how it would feel to lose your football club, listen to the documentary, which described with great accuracy what happened when the Lions were killed off.  You can find the link below.

I only knew one Fitzroy fan at high school, Johnny Franklin.  When he wore his scarf or jumper he really stood out, because no one else at school followed Fitzroy.  In my lifetime, Fitzroy were hopeless.  I hated losing to them, because they were rarely good.  Since 1960, they’d played in just ten finals, for just four wins.  Their history was pathetic, and many football pundits have never missed them.

In Defeat We’ll Always Try is a reminder at what the pundits lost.  It features key players involved at the time, North’s Greg Miller, Fitzroy’s Colin Hobbs, administrator Michael Brennan, writer Barry Dickens, Fitzroy supporter Jan Wright, former champ Kevin Murray and former Bears president Noel Gordon.  

If you’ve never listened to a radio documentary before, or found any kind of resolution in Fitzroy’s death, you need to listen to this documentary.  In chronicling the months leading up to the merger, the documentary is emotional, provocative, confronting and magnificent.  It is a reminder how the AFL buckled under weight of pressure from Richmond’s and Essendon’s president, that the merger between North and Fitzroy would create a super club.

North’s former CEO Greg Miller said the intention was to create a super club.  Certainly North was being tough on the negotiations, wanting 54 players and salary cap concessions.  Essendon, who voted against North joining the VFL in 1922, were vocal, once again, and the rumblings started.  The AFL told Miller his demands were too high.

‘We weren’t prepared to start compromising,’ Miller said, about the promises the AFL had already made.

‘On Monday the first of July we had a firm heads of agreement with North Melbourne, done, signed and dusted and I think as I recall agreed to by the AFL,’ Colin Hobbs said.  ‘Things went wrong on the Thursday.’

Fitzroy went into receivership on the Thursday.  Michael Brennan, the administrator for the creditors, spurned the agreement North had reached with the Lions and reopened negotiations with anyone willing to make an offer.  The AFL, worried by the fear emanating from Windy Hill and Punt Road, embraced an offer from Brisbane’s president Noel Gordon.

Basically, Gordon told the AFL he could ease their concerns.  ‘We’ll do it your way,’ Gordon said.

And Fitzroy went north to Brisbane.  The following week, Fitzroy’s banner read, seduced by North, raped by Brisbane, fucked by the AFL.

The AFL was livid.

Supporter Jan Wright is forthright during the documentary.  ‘It’s a really disastrous thing to suddenly lose your football club,’ she said.  ‘It was like losing someone in your family.’  Her emotion ran deeper, and when she discussed tears, the emotion was hard to ignore. 

Club historian Barry Dickens was more forceful.  ‘I hope they roast in hell for what they did,’ Dickens said of the AFL.

The program provided glimpses of Fitzroy’s last game in Melbourne and those final moments after their last official game against Fremantle in Perth, in round 22, 1996.  No football fan can ignore that kind of bare emotion.

Sara Macliver, a soprano born and raised in Perth, sang Auld Lang Syne, which was followed by a minute’s silence.

Fitzroy faded into memory that afternoon in Perth, accompanied by silence.

The documentary heralds the success the new club achieved, four grand finals for three consecutive premierships.  Former champ Kevin Murray talked up the merger, as did Noel Gordon, and while their sentiments are genuine, very few Brisbane based fans offered nothing to the history of Fitzroy.

It would be like your wife divorcing you and moving 2000 kilometres north, and you supporting the new alliance.

In Defeat We’ll Always Try is based on pure emotion.  That provides weakness, because while Greg Miller talks about creating a super club and Noel Gordon discusses his desire to have supporters in Melbourne, neither man spares a thought for Fitzroy.  It was all about what they could gain from the merger.

That weakness, though, is the documentary’s greatest strength, because it reduces football to the outer, to those who followed the club, were a part of it but did not run it.

When the Fitzroy fans talk about the death of their club, they’re not exaggerating.  When they talk about being expendable, they’re not lying.

It seems amazing now how the AFL let Fitzroy die because they were in $4.5 million in debt.  The AFL could’ve covered that debt in 1996.  They didn’t, because they didn’t want to.  Fitzroy weren’t strategically important.  It was as simple as that.

Fifteen years after Fitzroy’s demise, Port Adelaide is now under major pressure, in debt by $4 million, unloved by former supporters and woeful on the field.  It matters little, the AFL will never get rid of the Power, because they’re strategically important.  Port Adelaide, no matter what the level of debt or incompetence, will never die.

The other interstate clubs are also strategically important, so no matter their troubles, they’ll always find a rich embrace from the AFL.  Being expendable isn’t strategically important.  Simply, Fitzroy had nothing, absolutely nothing.

Examine history, and analyse what the merger between Fitzroy and Brisbane has provided.  Those three premierships Brisbane achieved from 2001-03 might’ve been achieved without the merger.  Had the AFL supported Fitzroy through their financial troubles, and given the equalising nature of the draft, it might’ve been Fitzroy who won three consecutive flags.

For years I believed the merger was pointless and achieved absolutely nothing.  I don’t follow Brisbane.  I never followed Fitzroy, but I’ve always had sympathy.

After listening to In Defeat We’ll Always Try, I just wanted to cry, because I kept thinking about my club, North Melbourne, and how I’d feel if it happened to us…

You will find In Defeat We’ll Always Try – the Death of the Fitzroy Lions at the following link:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2011/3240791.htm

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