Mark Zanotti joined Fitzroy from the Brisbane Bears for $12,000

At a time when no-one wanted to play for them, Fitzroy couldn’t believe it when Mark Zanotti rang and said he wanted to be a Lion. But there was the little problem of financing his $12,000 asking price.

Mark Zanotti played for Fitzroy after the Lions managed to raise $12,000.

By 1993 Fitzroy had no money and no one wanted to play for them.

“We used to get letters from players and manager of players saying ‘Do not draft us’,” then-coach Robert Shaw said.

“Andrew McKay had contacted us and said: ‘If you draft me, I’m not playing for you’.”

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But out of the blue came a phone call from the Brisbane Bears’ dashing defender Mark Zanotti, who expressed his desire to play for the battling Lions.

“We nearly had heart attacks,” Shaw said.

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“He was a very good player, a real dasher off halfback and he only wanted a base payment of $12,000, plus match payments.

“He wants to play footy in Melbourne and blow me down, he wants to play for Fitzroy. Surely we can offer him the $12,000.

“But the Fitzroy hierarchy said: ‘No, we’ve got no money. You can give him a $2,000 base and match payments’.

“We had committed to him, but they said we couldn’t draft him.”

On draft day 1993, Shaw and recruiting manager Neville Stibbard were told in no uncertain terms they couldn’t draft Zanotti or “anyone for money”.

“But we had this player who actually wanted to come to us and he was a handy player,” Shaw said.

It’s the pre-season draft, pick 10, and Fitzroy has the microphone.

“I feel this jab in my ribs. It’s Stibbard,” Shaw said.

“He said: ‘Read this number out … Mark Zanotti, Brisbane Bears’. The club was furious and told us, ‘You’ve drafted him, you pay for him’.

“We had to find 12 grand.”

Zanotti wanted to join the Lions.

Andrew McKay told Fitzroy he wouldn’t play for them.

Using Stibbard’s Port Melbourne VFL connections, Shaw and a small group of officials set off at 5am to sell raffle tickets for signed Paul Roos and Alastair Lynch jumpers at the docks and Footscray fish markets.

In a few weeks’ time they had Zanotti’s annual wage.

“We were playing North Melbourne in a pre-season game in Olinda. Zanotti’s turned up and gone ‘I’m not signing until I see the money’.

“We’ve said: ‘Just play and trust us; the money’s taken care of’,” Shaw said.

“Our team manager gets the original brown bag and puts the $12,000 under the seat in his car and he signed.

“A little while later we got this call from the AFL asking how we paid for Zanotti when we didn’t have any money.

“So we told them the truth — that we’d gone down to the Painters and Dockers and got them to finance us through raffle tickets and added that if the league would like to follow it up I’m sure the Painters and Dockers would be delighted.

“Case closed, that was it.”