Lions

Fitzroy Football Club

The Melbourne-based Fitzroy Football Club was formed on 26 September 1883 at the Brunswick Hotel. The Victorian Football Association (VFA) made changes to their rules, allowing Fitzroy to join as the seventh club in 1884, playing in the maroon and blue colours of the local Normanby Junior Football Club.

They quickly became one of the most successful clubs in the VFA, consistently placing in the top four and drawing large crowds to their home at the Brunswick Street Oval in Edinburgh Gardens. This success was capped off by Fitzroy winning the VFA premiership in 1895.

Fitzroy then went on to be one of the eight break-away clubs who formed the Victorian Football League in 1897.

They continued their VFA form and became a powerhouse in the early days of the new VFL, winning a total of eight premierships, of which seven (1898, 1899, 1904, 1905, 1913, 1916 and 1922) were won while they were nicknamed the Maroons, and one (1944) as the Gorillas.

The club also boasted six Brownlow Medal winners: Haydn Bunton Sr., Wilfred Smallhorn, Dinny Ryan, Allan Ruthven, Kevin Murray, and Bernie Quinlan.

The club changed its nickname to the Lions in 1957, but when Fitzroy was evicted from its home ground of Brunswick St Oval in 1965, this began a sustained period of poor on-field performance and financial losses. Fitzroy entered one of the least successful periods any VFL/AFL club has had. The club finished in the bottom three 11 times in the 1960s and 1970s, including three wooden spoons in four years between 1963 and 1966. The club won only a single game between 1963 and 1964 – known as the Miracle Match when it defeated eventual premiers Geelong in Round 10, 1963 – but its 1964 season was winless, and as of 2023 stands as the only winless season by any club since 1950.

Despite a revival in the '80s, when the Lions made the finals four times under the coaching of Robert Walls and David Parkin, and the playing group of 1981 Brownlow Medallist Bernie Quinlan, Ron Alexander, Garry Wilson, Gary Pert and Paul Roos, the club's financial situation was perilous.

The VFL's plans to move or merge struggling Fitzroy to Brisbane pre-dated the Brisbane Bears, and negotiations between the league and the club began in 1986 with the playing group voting for a move to Brisbane. However, Fitzroy resisted the move despite significant incentives and in response, the VFL made the decision to cut any further financial assistance to the club. By the start of the 1996 season, they were almost at the end of their financial tether. With no home ground, back to back wooden spoons, and their future under a cloud, Fitzroy began to consider options for survival.

Brisbane Bears (1987–1996)

The Brisbane Bears were born in 1987 and initially played home matches at Carrara Stadium on the Gold Coast. In its early days, the club was uncompetitive on the field and struggled to shake the derisive tags which included "The Carrara Koalas" (in reference to the Gold Coast home and the somewhat tame marsupial) and "The Bad News Bears".

After the collapse of the business empire belonging to Bears deputy chairman Christopher Skase and the resignation of chairman Paul Cronin, the club was taken over by the AFL and re-sold to Gold Coast hospitality businessman Reuben Pelerman.

Off-field, Pelerman was losing millions of dollars annually on the club and at one point in 1991 told Bears coach Robert Walls that he was closing it down. The Bears finished last in 1990 and 1991.

To survive, The Bears experimented with playing matches at the Gabba in Brisbane in 1991, moving all home matches to the venue ahead of the 1993 season.

As part of the club's move to the Gabba, Pelerman agreed to release the Bears from private ownership and revert to a traditional club structure in which the club's members were able to elect the board.

Membership and attendances instantly tripled now that the club was finally playing in their home city of Brisbane.

The Bears only qualified for the finals series in 1995 and 1996, and the closest the club came to a Grand Final was a preliminary final in 1996.

On extremely shaky financial ground, the Bears struggled to generate many revenue opportunities in their short and turbulent ten-year existence. Despite improving its on-field fortunes, and drafting exciting young players such as Michael Voss, Justin Leppitsch, Jason Akermanis, Darryl White, and Nigel Lappin, the club's existence was still at threat due to severe financial problems, and since 1990 the Bears had been actively exploring merger options with Fitzroy.

Brisbane Bears absorb Fitzroy's AFL operations, become Brisbane Lions

Fitzroy's directors had agreed in principle to merge with the eventual 1996 premiers, North Melbourne, as the "North-Fitzroy Kangaroos". However, that proposal was rejected 15–1 by the club presidents, reportedly out of concern that an all-Victorian merge would be too powerful. Instead, Fitzroy was placed into administration, and its administrator accepted an offer to merge its AFL operations with Brisbane.