See who made the top 25 Melbourne footy pubs and vote for your favourite

With no footy at AFL venues in Melbourne this weekend, you’ll need somewhere to watch the games. So what’s your go to footy pub? Vote for your favourite.

Fitzroy’s The Rose Hotel has been crowned the Herald Sun’s No. 1 footy pub as Melburnians search for a place to watch the Gather Round action with all nine games relocated to South Australia.

The Napier St venue, nestled just behind the busy Brunswick St end of Fitzroy, boasts 16 tap beers and has been serving cold ones for more than 150 years.

The brick walls are covered by vintage Fitzroy Football Club memorabilia and the pub blasts the theme song of the winning team after every AFL match shown on the screens.

“AFL is a hugely important part of the business,” The Rose publican Neil Spark said.

“We show every game, every week, the major games with sound and the team songs at the end of the games for the winning team.

“It’s a pretty good atmosphere in here I think. When the pub’s completely packed and that team song goes off at the end (of games) sometime the pub feels like it’s bouncing off its rafters.

The Rose Hotel has been crowned the Herald Sun’s No. 1 footy pub. Picture: Michael Klein

“The nice thing about our memorabilia is a lot of it is donated by regulars. It’s people’s personal jerseys and collections they’ve got donated to the pub, or loaned to the pub.

“We’re a very local’s locals pub. I feel people find it nice to see some of their gear up on the walls.

“We’re open from midday showing every game, as we do every weekend during the AFL season. We’re definitely the next-best place if you can’t get to the game, for sure.”

The rankings were chosen after research and surveying of footy fans across Melbourne with atmosphere, history, screens and footy specials all part of the criteria.

Carlton’s Great Northern watering hole – ranked No. 2 on the Herald Sun’s top-25 list – is in the process of installing new technology to future-proof its 14 TV screens.

“We’re looking to upgrade and try to stay ahead of the curve,” venue manager Sean Fawsitt said.

“We have this built so it can cater for 8K technology whenever that exists.

“We’re also trying to have all our audio visuals on touch screen so we can change channels in one second – it’s pretty exciting.

Fawsitt said he expected the upcoming Gather Round to draw big numbers to his venue/

“I’m interested to see how it goes … we will definitely be extraordinarily busy with no games the G.

“Currently we can show 14 different games and sports at the one time so we will be fine with all the crossovers.”