Greg Miller Sacked podcast: Why the planned merger between North Melbourne and Fitzroy failed

In one of footy’s great sliding doors moments, North Melbourne and Fitzroy were all set to merge until everything fell apart. Greg Miller tells Sacked what happened.

Footballer Nathan Buckley was awarded the Jack Oatey medal for best on ground

Former North Melbourne chief executive Greg Miller says the AFL “lied” and deceived his club over the failed Kangaroos-Fitzroy merger that had seemed a certainty halfway through 1996.

In one of footy’s great sliding doors moments, the Kangaroos knew their financial plight was so perilous they agreed to merge with Fitzroy in a deal meant to include more than $6 million as well as extra draft, list and fixture incentives before they were jilted for a Brisbane-Fitzroy merger.

Remarkably the Roos won two of the next four premierships and the club is now out of debt and on financial safe ground for the first time in its history.

Mergers are now seen as disastrous for AFL clubs but Miller told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast the AFL – led by Ross Oakley – sold the Roos a pup as they stopped the deal at the last minute.

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Miller has been accused of derailing the merger by former North Melbourne director Peter de Rauch but the long-time football administrator says the league changed the rules of the merger in those fateful weeks leading up to a July decision.

“It is an amazing story. They had a meeting with all the clubs at Leonda (function centre) in Kew there, and they handed around a paper. They said merging is the No. 1 priority of the AFL and here is what we are going to offer you,” he told Sacked.

Ross Oakley was the AFL boss at the time of the almost merger.

“List sizes of this, salary cap of this, this sort of money. I took it back to the board and we talked about it. We were winning matches but the supporter base wasn’t getting any bigger, there was hardly any equalisation back then.

“There were a few little hiccups and one of them was we didn’t want (Fitzroy president) Dyson Hore-Lacy to stay on and the other one was Nauru, we had to get their ($1.25 million) debt off Fitzroy’s debt.

“We worked through it and as we were winning games some other clubs started to get worried and jealous that we were going to be this super team. So there was a famous meeting in Fitzroy when we refused to give ground. We had been offered (the deal) on paper and we were asked to dilute it. You can’t do that. The AFL wanted less players, less salary cap. We said, ‘No this is the deal’.

“Of course behind the scenes the No. 1 priority wasn’t a merger, it was the success of the northern states. That was more important for the TV rights. They lied to us at Leonda. It wasn’t true (they wanted a merger).”

As Wayne Carey’s Roos began to dominate the 1996 season, rival clubs started to lobby hard against a potential super-team with a $6 million incentive, an eventual vote lodged 14-1 against them.

Former North Melbourne president Ron Casey.

Only hours later an AFL Commission meeting voted for Brisbane to merge with Fitzroy, with Brisbane’s Noel Gordon bragging about the new entity on Channel 9’s The Footy Show that night with North Melbourne president Ron Casey next to him.

“It was shocking,” Miller said. “I felt sorry for Ron Casey sitting next to him, being belittled like that, from a person like him. It was the announcement that day and they got Gordon and Ron Casey on, Ron was gracious and Gordon was a pig.

“We had been through the heartache that day and we went to Richmond in front of the 25 other delegates … and they wanted us to water it down and we said, ‘Why would we? We were offered it, you got the same offer, we have gone the hard yards, we have got out to our members, our players, we had gone out to the media’.

“Ross Oakley was a great administrator. I blued with him over it, I still disagree with him. He has to protect the AFL point of view. It was pretty hard and we got some compensation and we kept playing in finals. Financially we had to look at other options for the next 10 years, it has only been the change in AFL attitude about the 18 clubs that you can survive in Melbourne.”

Months after the merger fell over, the Kangaroos took delight in the fact they defeated Brisbane in a preliminary final before knocking off Sydney in the grand final – the AFL’s two northern teams at the time.

Wayne Carey led the Roos to a famous flag in 1996.

BUCKLEY RECRUITING MEETING THAT LEFT ROOS

Former North Melbourne chief executive Greg Miller has revealed dramatic new details of how he hoodwinked AFL House to sign SANFL youngster Nathan Buckley for $10,000 in an Alberton Oval car park.

Kangaroos recruiter Miller signed Buckley on a three-year deal in 1991, the year before he dominated the SANFL as a premiership-winning Magarey Medallist

He saw his potential as a 20-year-old after he played his first senior practice match in Alice Springs as a Port Adelaide player and handed Buckley $10,000 in cash which he would return years later.

Buckley was able to be listed as a Northern Territorian linked to Brisbane but because the Bears could not trade away talent for 12 months Miller had to date the form for the following season.

He brokered a trade with the Bears for a second-round pick but the deal eventually came apart as Buckley exploded – with the AFL threatening to penalise him for conduct prejudicial to the draft.

Ex-Kangaroos CEO Greg Miller at Holland Park in Kensington.

Buckley was eventually forced to play for Brisbane for a season before choosing Collingwood over clubs including the Roos, who missed out for a second time.

Miller recalled to the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast that he used creative solutions to secure Buckley despite it contravening league rules.

“He belonged to Brisbane because he came down from the NT under a zoning rule,” Miller said.

“There was a rule to protect Brisbane. They couldn’t trade off a player until 12 months after the zoning.

“I went over and signed him up and I gave him 10 grand, and he signed a registration form and a clearance form from Brisbane. I flew to Brisbane and caught up with Andrew Ireland and Shane O’Sullivan in their portable sheds, and said this guy is playing in the seconds at Port Adelaide and I offered a second-round draft choice and they agreed.

“I said, ‘We have to postdate this because you are not allowed to trade him this year, you have to wait until next year’, so we got a form and filled it out with the following year’s date and second-round draft choice, and the following year he wins the Magarey Medal.”

Miller said Buckley was thrilled to be signed up by a Melbourne-based club and potentially naive to the consequences.

“He was taken aback that someone was interested in him playing for the seconds. He knew I liked him. I had met his dad Ray and had some rapport, and then (the next year) Andrew and Shane started taking a few backward steps and the AFL took me to court or a tribunal.

“In the end the AFL gave up and I got away with it. What Schwabby (AFL administrator Alan Schwab) did the following year was change the colour of the form. It went from a white form to a blue form. It was the wrong colour (and therefore not valid).”

Footballer Nathan Buckley was awarded the Jack Oatey medal for best on ground in the grand final

Buckley met with North Melbourne coach Denis Pagan after his single-head Brisbane stint but was dismissive as he sat back on his hotel-room bed eating an apple, with Pagan later saying he was “looking like f---ing Marilyn Monroe”.

Urged on by Pagan, the Roos would mercilessly taunt Buckley over the years given their premiership success.

But Miller says he did little wrong and was a pawn in the recruiting efforts of big Melbourne clubs.

“He won the Rising Star and he basically said to us I want to play for a big club and he said he wanted to play in a premiership, and of course 10 years later he missed two at North and three at Brisbane and everyone told him all about it, every match. Every time we played against him.

“Many years later I found 10 grand in the (North Melbourne) bingo account, he sent the money back to the wrong account. He gave the money back, he gave the 10 grand back, “Someone yelled out there is $10,000 in our bingo account, we haven’t used it for 10 years and we traced it back and it was Nathan Buckley.

“All credit to Nathan, he did one day at the MCG press box apologise to me, he said he was young and naive and in his book he said that.

“I have nothing but admiration for Nathan Buckley and how he has grown up and handled himself in all walks, as a player, captain and coach.”

Buckley wrote in his autobiography of that difficult time, with the Roos irate he had made so clear to them he did not see success in their short-term future.

“Despite my justification at the time, I’m not proud of the way I treated Greg Miller and North,’’ he wrote in his book.

‘’I had a choice – to stand firm and see where it all ended, or to jump ship. The fact is, I reneged on a contract, legal or otherwise, and there’s no sidestepping that. I was an immature 20-year-old, ignorant about the circumstances I found myself in. But at the time I felt more like a pawn being moved by far more influential characters than me.’’

Originally published as Greg Miller Sacked podcast: Why the planned merger between North Melbourne and Fitzroy failed