AFL deal: how Brisbane outplayed North Melbourne to merge with Fitzroy

IT’S been 20 years today since Fitzroy played its last ever game, after almost merging with North Melbourne. Revisit how Brisbane pulled off the AFL deal of the century.

An emotional Fitzroy fan burns a Lions jumper after the club’s last match on Victorian soil.

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A FOUNDING member of the AFL and 113 years of history died 20 years ago when the ailing Fitzroy Football Club faced a forced marriage with the Brisbane Bears.

It did not get a Melbourne farewell for its last match.

The club lost to Richmond by 151 points — its second largest defeat ever — when it played Richmond at the MCG on August 25, 1996.

The next week, in its final appearance, it went down by 86 points to Fremantle at Subiaco.

But for two small details — the size of the merged club’s players list and the fate of Lions president Dyson Hore-Lacy — Fitzroy could so easily merged with North Melbourne.

There had been merger discussions with Brisbane earlier in 1996 but Fitzroy resisted an interstate move and held out.

Twenty years ago this week, talks were well advanced with North Melbourne.

They had settled on club colours and a logo — a gold kangaroo on a red background below North’s familiar royal blue and white stripes.

They were to be known as the North-Fitzroy Roos.

But by late June, the two clubs disagreed over Fitzroy president Dyson Hore-Lacy and his role at the new club.

The Kangaroos baulked at having Hore-Lacy on the board, and negotiations stalled..

That’s when a major creditor to Fitzroy, the Nauru Insurance Company, stepped in.

On June 28, 1996, the company appointed administrator Michael Brennan to ensure its $1.25 million loan was repaid.

The Kangaroos and Lions quickly returned to the negotiation table.

But before they did, on June 28, 1996, the Nauru Insurance Company, a major creditor to the Lions, stepped in and appointed Michael Brennan as administrator to ensure the Lions repaid a $1.25 million loan to the club.

The Kangaroos later conceded that the Hore-Lacy dispute allowed for Brennan’s appointment and gave Brisbane the break it needed.

It took Fitzroy’s future out of Fitzroy’s hands and made Brennan a kingmaker.

Brennan insisted he would seek a merger deal that would best match the club’s financial circumstances.

Fitzroy had been down the merger road before. Melbourne and Footscray had both been prospective suitors in the ‘80s.

The deal with the Doggies fell over following a rearguard action from Footscray supporters, who saved the club to fight on by raising $2 million to bail it out of trouble.

Fitzroy had picked up the wooden spoon in 1995 and was just as bad in 1996. The club won just three matches in its final two seasons.

Sensing the end was nigh, Fitzroy fans trooped out to the Western Oval the next day for the Lions’ home game, against Geelong.

The Cats handed Fitzroy another thrashing, but the fans gathered on the ground at the end of the match late on that dismal, drizzly Saturday Melbourne afternoon to pay tribute to their boys.

The Roos-Fitzroy deal was agreed and all but executed.

The clubs had settled on a new logo, guernsey and club song.

Brisbane had been a contender but their overtures had been rejected by Fitzroy in favour of a Melbourne-based deal.

But with Brennan in place, and finances now the main priority, Brisbane was back in the game.

On Monday, July 1, as the AFL Commission met to discuss Fitzroy’s bleak future, Bears president Noel Gordon and CEO Andrew Ireland flew to Melbourne to try to rekindle their deal, this time with Brennan.

By Wednesday morning, they had the green light from the AFL to reopen talks.

At the same time, the AFL Commission told North Melbourne its proposal wouldn’t fly with the other AFL clubs.

North Melbourne was a power side — it went on to win the premiership that year — and the clubs were unlikely to wear a merger deal that gave it a senior list of 54 players, extra including players from Fitzroy and a salary cap $400,000 greater than what the other clubs had.

Sure enough, club delegates at a meeting that week voted 14-1 against the North-Fitzroy merger.

With North out of the frame, it was merge or die for Fitzroy.

Brennan was happy to accept a deal that gave him an extra $1 million to settle Fitzroy’s debts.

The other clubs preferred Brisbane’s proposed list of 44 players, including eight from Fitzroy.

Suddenly, Brisbane was in the box seat.

North Melbourne tried to counter, matching Brisbane’s compensation and list numbers, but Brisbane was always the AFL’s preferred bidder to propagate the game nationally.

AFL boss Ross Oakley, the man who presided over the abortive Fitzroy-Footscray deal seven years earlier, announced the merger of Fitzroy and Brisbane on July 4, 1996.

Footscray launched a last-ditch court appeal to head off the deal, but it collapsed.

Fitzroy captain Brad Boyd was dining with eight teammates at Fasta Pasta in Preston after training when he heard the news.

Boyd told the Herald Sun he was relieved after such a rough year of uncertainty.

“I am glad there is a decision and all the guys’ minds will be at ease,” he said.

With only eight players going to Fitzroy, Boyd said he was confident most would get drafted by interstate clubs.

“As for going there (Brisbane), I haven’t given it much thought,” he said.

“But the players and everyone can actually start thinking about what the future holds.”

At the time, Herald Sun chief football writer Mike Sheahan said the Brisbane deal was a triumph of planning, patience and persistence.

“(Brisbane’s Noel) Gordon never buckled. The offer remained on the table until the paper became dog-eared,” Sheahan wrote.

“The rejections never hurt his feelings. He was even gracious enough to say that if Brisbane’s overtures were rejected in favour of North Melbourne, his club would give the union its blessing.

“It is a great lesson to administrators and players. If you keep persisting, you’re always a chance.”

As an AFL side, Fitzroy disappeared on September 1, 1996 after 113 years and a year short of its centenary as a founding AFL club.

Apart from its ties to Brisbane, the spirit of Fitzroy lives on in the Victorian Amateur Football Association — in the old team colours, with the old theme song and playing at the Brunswick Street Oval, Fitzroy’s original home ground.

* a version of this story was first published on May 27.