The Bulldogs saved themselves in 1989. They also saved North, Richmond and the Saints

In 1989, Footscray were on the verge of disappearing. The famous fight that followed saved not only the team now known as the Western Bulldogs, but other Victorian clubs in “desperate straits”.

This week, the man who almost oversaw their demise wished them a happy birthday ahead of their milestone match on Friday night, marking 100 years since they joined the VFL/AFL.

Western Bulldogs super supporter Irene Chatfield, the plaintiff in the legal action that helped save the club.Credit: Jason South

“And many more to come,” said Ross Oakley, the former VFL chief.

Oakley was in charge in 1989 when the Bulldogs fought so fiercely to keep existing.

The league, with the eventual support of then Bulldogs president Nick Columb and a handful of the club’s board of directors, wanted the Dogs to merge with Fitzroy and move to Princes Park. Carlton premiership great Rod Austin had already been lined up as coach, with Robert Shaw his assistant.

What followed was a bitter, public battle.

The saviours

Lawyer Dennis Galimberti, at the time the Bulldogs’ chief executive, and supporter Irene Chatfield, the lead plaintiff in an injunction brought before the Victorian Supreme Court, were instrumental in thwarting the VFL’s bid. So too Peter Gordon, then an emerging star from the western suburbs in the legal community.

They led a brilliant campaign that rallied not only Bulldogs supporters, but the wider football community, prompting hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

Footscray fans protest the proposal to merger the club with Fitzroy in 1989.Credit: Neil Newitt

Galimberti recalled those desperate – but immensely satisfying – times.

“There was an extraordinary public reaction. I said on the steps of the Supreme Court, which Peter Gordon said was instrumental, ‘We have got a rally organised this Sunday at the Western Oval to have a meeting to discuss this merger and to raise money to show the VFL that we can pay our way. But if you don’t turn up, and this applies to all supporters of all clubs, the club will be gone. And next it will be St Kilda, North Melbourne or Richmond because they were all in equally desperate straights’,” Galimberti said.

The Tigers had their famous “Save Our Skins” campaign in 1990, while the Kangaroos, again with the Lions, and Saints, with Carlton, also had their merger battles in later years.

“We later helped Richmond with their fund-raising program, ‘Save Our Skins’. They replicated what we did. North were also in a hell of a lot of trouble,” Galimberti said.

Chatfield, 75, said the Bulldogs’ fight gave other clubs the know-how on how to tackle league headquarters.

Dennis Galimberti with Chatfield in 2004, under a mural of Footscray great Charlie Sutton.Credit: Sebastian Costanzo

“When Richmond had bad troubles, I helped them, too. We all had to stick together. They stuck with us, we had to stick with them,” Chatfield, now a 60-year club member, said.

Gordon said he still reflects on that time, thankful for the good work of others, particularly those who gave money “that they often didn’t have”.

He said the fight with the league had been more than just about football.

“Back in the 1980s, Footscray was, together with the other western suburbs, collectively called the deprived west,” he said.

“It was an area of disadvantage where not a lot of good things happened in life. Whilst I have broader perspective on it now, having got to know people like Ross Oakley and Peter Scanlon a lot better and understanding their vision of trying to create a national league, it did seem like my suburb and my town and people of my community were being targeted unfairly in circumstances where they didn’t have a lot going on in their lives,” Gordon said.

As Oakley’s autobiography, The Phoenix Rises, explains, the league’s Blue Report called for a change of “strategic direction” amid rising costs.

Ross Oakley (left) with Peter Gordon in 2014, remembering Footscray’s bitter fight for survival.Credit: Justin McManus

“Indeed, many discussions were held: between Melbourne and North Melbourne, St Kilda and Melbourne, Fitzroy and North Melbourne, Fitzroy and anybody – no doubt there were others that never made the main table,” Oakley wrote.

Oakley and his family endured the hostile and emotional fallout from the Bulldogs’ fightback, featuring the infamous “Up Yours Oakley” campaign.

Reflecting this week, Oakley said he only had the best interests of a national competition in mind.

“The commission felt there were a number of clubs struggling to keep themselves in existence given the financial position the league was in at that time. We made a decision to encourage one or two struggling clubs to merge. I can understand the position they took,” Oakley said.

“In essence, it needed something like this to fire up the supporters at that time. Footscray had been trying to raise money for some time and had raised very little – $25,000 or $30,000.”

The key moment

The Bulldogs were on the verge of being placed into administration. A proposed merger with the Lions, as exclusively reported by Eddie McGuire on Ten, was on the cards. Galimberti, who had been kept in the dark about the plan, but later famously blew the whistle with a late-night call to the Sun newspaper, recalled arguably the key moment in what became known as “Operation Fightback”.

Gordon, then 31, who had already established the Save the Dogs group a year earlier when the club faced pressure to relocate from the Western Oval, met with anti-merger supporters Alan Hogg, Les Twentyman, Alan Dalton, Steve Palmer and Galimberti in the social club of the Western Oval.

“There were supporters in the bar and whatnot. One bloke said: ‘We’re f---ed, we should just go back to the VFA’,” Galimberti said.

“That was dismissed very quickly. Peter and I put our heads together and said the best way forward is to identify a Footscray member, as it says under the constitution.

“We had to find a plaintiff. We spoke to a couple of women at the bar. One woman was too scared, the other said she had a superannuation fund and a flat in west Footscray, and she didn’t want to have those assets exposed. We were scratching our heads together, suddenly Irene bursts into this circle of six blokes and says: ‘I’ll do it, if you want’. So we found the plaintiff, and issued a Supreme Court writ, getting an injunction to stop the implementation of the merger.”

Happy days: Peter Gordon in his second stint as club president.Credit: Getty Images

Chatfield, who was living in a housing commission flat, said she hadn’t been sure what to expect.

“I didn’t know I was going to court. I just thought I was going to sign a paper. I ended up in court, and thank god Dennis and I were there, and we won. We said the right things to the judge,” Chatfield said.

“All the people of Victoria gathered together to help the club, even overseas, in England there were people who sent $1000 cheques.”

The injunction was granted, with the AFL given 21 days to respond and show why the Bulldogs’ doors must close.

The club survives

Columb had asked Oakley if the club could retain its licence if it sold off all of its players to pay its debts. This was not allowed under the league’s rules.

However, by the time the three weeks had expired, the Bulldogs were in a position of strength. They held a stunning rally at Whitten Oval, and raised $1.6 million overall as part of their fightback plan, including donations from petrochemical companies under orders from Joan Kirner, who became Victorian premier not long after.

The league kept pressing, and Galimberti remembers a front-page story in The Age, detailing a letter Oakley had sent Gordon warning the Bulldogs they needed to raise more than $12 million over the next three years to stay afloat. The Dogs believed this was some kind of veiled threat.

“There was money still flooding in. When we showed them the bank statements, they relented and said, ‘OK, we will let you back in’. The case just fizzled out,” Galimberti said.

Western Bulldogs president Kylie Watson-Wheeler, former captain Bob Murphy, current vice captain Tom Liberatore and CEO Ameet Bains at Whitten Oval ahead of their 100th anniversary celebration game.Credit: Penny Stephens

“The best thing about it from my mind, from a more general footy [perspective] is, the club was about 120 years old. It started in 1876 … been a member of the VFL since 1925. It, among all the other clubs, had created equity in the VFL.

“It was insidious that the governing body which we considered to be our forebears, the governing body would turn the knife back into the heart of one of its own member clubs. From an overarching point of view, it was just an act of bastardry.”

The new era

The Bulldogs began 1990 with a new administration, led by Gordon as president and Galimberti as CEO. Terry Wheeler was the new coach, replacing Mick Malthouse, while Doug Hawkins was captain.

They came close to winning a flag in 1992 and 1997-98, but had to wait until 2016 – when Gordon had returned for his second stint in charge – to deliver the club’s second premiership.

The Bulldogs, trading as Footscray Football Club Limited, have had their financial issues since.

But through Gordon’s two stints in charge, and the presidencies of David Smorgon and now Kylie Watson-Wheeler, they remain a rock solid part of an expanded competition, growing into Ballarat, and last year having revenue of more than $60 million, record membership, and net assets of more than $100 million.

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