Fitzroy Football Club: Upgrades to Brunswick St Oval’

They were once a VFL powerhouse, and more than 20 years after they left the league, Fitzroy’s spiritual home is getting a massive revamp.

The City of Yarra have announced plans to upgrade the Brunswick St Oval in Fitzroy North, which is more than 130 years old and the original home of Fitzroy Football Club. Photo: City of Yarra

More than 30 former Fitzroy players will return to the club’s spiritual home on Saturday where the timber pavilion will be renamed in honour of favourite son Brownlow Medallist Kevin Murray.

The announcement to name the 134-year-old pavilion at Brunswick St Oval after Murray, who played more than 300 games for Fitzroy, coincides with plans released by the City of Yarra that will ensure a new HQ for the former VFL/AFL club.

Having based themselves at various times at the Junction Oval, Princes Park and even a nearby pub in Fitzroy North since 1968, it is expected the new club rooms will store a large selection of Fitzroy memorabilia, including some of the team’s VFL premiership flags.’

Fitzroy vice president Gabrielle Murphy said the $6.5m investment, funded almost exclusively by the state government, was a “special” moment.

“For Fitzroy supporters to come back to our spiritual home is very special,” Ms Murphy told Leader.

The club has been sharing the pavilion’s facilities with other sporting teams and the community since it joined the VAFA in 2009, more than a decade after it ceased to exist as an AFL team, having merged with the Brisbane Bears in 1996.

“It’s been a long road,” Ms Murphy said.

Colin Hobbs, who played for Fitzroy in the VFL from 1966 to 1971 and formerly sat on the board, said the club became the “nomads” of the league in the 1960s.

Hobbs, who will be at Brunswick St Oval on Saturday for the renaming of the pavilion, said it was important to “bring it home” to Fitzroy.

“People like to know their roots,” he said.

The upgrade of the pavilion will be part of a broader revamp of the Edinburgh Gardens sporting precinct, at a cost of more than $15 million.

A new double-storey pavilion will be built and Fitzroy Tennis Club, which before the pandemic was in the top-10 of Victoria’s most-used clubs, will get two new tennis courts, bringing the total to eight.