Today, July 4 2016, marks 20 years to the day since “merge day” - when the Brisbane Bears and Fitzroy Football Club’s merged and became the Brisbane Bears Fitzroy Football Club Limited (trading has Brisbane Lions Australian Football Club), the AFL’s first merged club.
The Brisbane Lions was officially launched on 1 November 1996 and joined the national competition in 1997.
The merge announcement was made after a successful proposal put forward by Brisbane, which included a playing list of 44, a salary cap ‘bonus’ of $300,000 and an improved debt repayment schedule as part of the AFL’s merger fund ($6 million).
North Melbourne’s proposal of 50 players and a salary cap $400,000 more than the rest of the competition, was rejected.
At the time of the decision, John Kennedy, AFL Commission Chairman, said that the Brisbane offer was the preferred option of the AFL Commission for “strategic reasons”.
While AFL Chairman Ross Oakley said of the merger, “we think that from a commission point of view, this is the absolute best outcome for the competition, and certainly fits into our strategic plan."
Fitzroy played its last VFL/AFL game in 1996 against Fremantle at Domain Stadium, a match which was met with dignity by the Dockers.
While the end came with incredible sadness, it also came as small relief for most Fitzroy types including former Fitzroy captain, Matthew Rendell.
“Like a sick dog… It was almost like ‘please put us out of our misery,” Rendell said at the time.
Despite some promising footy in the 1980’s, including finals appearances in 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1986, Rendell didn’t think it enough to prevent the merger.
“No, we’d still be gone,” said Rendell.
“Wallsy said it as early as 1984. We’d just come off our best year, and nearly made the Grand Final, yet our membership went down.”
“We just didn’t have the financial support. We had some good crowds at games, sometimes up to 30,000 at the Junction and we were a team that people liked to watch, but not enough of them were from the top end of town.
"Those sort of people followed Carlton and Collingwood while we were the battlers,” Rendell said.
A scanned copy of the Football Record, Round 15, July 12-14, 1996.
On the field, the final years were tough for Fitzroy - they won just two games in 1995 with an average losing margin of 60 points. The Roys then won just the one game in their final season, by which time the average losing margin had blown out to 72 points.
Supporters’ loyalties were split thereafter.
Some bolted to North Melbourne, which had unsuccessfully tried to engineer a merger before the Brisbane deal went down.
Looking back, the merger is seen as the perfect combination of an emerging force, full of youthful enthusiasm and energy, with a proud foundation club, overloaded with history and tradition.
Together, the Bears and the Lions, would grow to become a formidable force with the toughest sporting competition in Australia; a legitimate two-city team, with vibrant supporter bases in both Brisbane and Melbourne that would rejoice in unison when the king of the jungle roared longest and loudest at the MCG on that one day in September.
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