Fitzroy Football Club: A look back 20 years after the club’s demise

Iconic, respected, pitied, loved and seldom hated, the Lions were the ultimate Cinderella club. Until financial reality intervened. This Sunday, we take a look at 20 years since the end of Fitzroy Football Club.

Fitzroy Football Club’s oldest surviving player is 99-year-old Bob Sayers. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

TWO decades after its death as an individual AFL entity, Fitzroy Football Club remains close to the hearts of its legion of supporters.

Iconic, respected, pitied, loved and seldom hated, the Lions were the ultimate Cinderella club. Until financial reality intervened.

Twenty years have passed since the Roy Boys merged with the Brisbane Bears but the Fitzroy spirit continues to burn brightly.

This Sunday, our award-winning sports team of reporter Leo Schlink and photographer Wayne Ludbey take a look at 20 years since the end of Fitzroy Football Club.

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CLASPING a photograph of Fitzroy’s 1938 VFL team, Bob Sayers peers into the faces of former comrades. Without prompting, Sayers reels off names — “Noel Price, ‘Chicken’ Smallhorn, Frank Curcio” — before his voice trails away. “I suppose most of them are dead now, probably,” Fitzroy’s oldest surviving VFL/AFL player says.

As one of the 1156 men who represented Fitzroy, Sayers was saddened by his club’s demise in 1996 when, after years of financial struggle, it merged with the Bears to form the Brisbane Lions.

But, as Sayers gazes into an image which provides a snapshot of Melbourne life from almost 80 years ago with its swarm of hats, picket fencing and ornate wood and iron grandstands, the sense of pride is palpable.

“It meant a lot as a kid. If you played league football, you were a top man,” he said.

“It was a great thing to play league football, I was only 19, only young.

“I got three pounds a week. You had to train two nights you’d get three pounds. Not much was it?”

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Don’t miss the full special feature only in this weekend’s Sunday Herald Sun.