“I see the broken eggs,” said the leftist Romanian writer Panait Istrati while touring the USSR. “Now where’s this omelette of yours?” Fitzroy fans could be forgiven for wondering the same thing, given the state of the Brisbane Lions right now. We see the broken eggs – the loss of our club in a hostile takeover dressed up as a merger. But the omelette? No, just a club that has been depressingly uncompetitive for years now, is in serious financial trouble and which hardly ever plays in Melbourne.
It’s not such a different scenario to the one at Fitzroy back in its dying days of the 1990s. There is one big difference, however: Fitzroy was being starved to death by the league; Brisbane must survive at all costs.
For all the pain and suffering the league has put Fitzroy supporters through, the end result is (despite a rare win last weekend) a club that is as bad as it ever was, both and on and off the field, yet which despite wearing our colours, singing our song and using our name, is no longer ours.
Fitzroy were actually very good in the 80s. We never made a grand final but we came close. We had players like Paul Roos, Gary Pert, Alistair Lynch, Michael Conlan and Bernie Quinlan. In some years, we had more members than Richmond.
But if winning was the be-all and end-all for fans, who would ever allow themselves to become exclusively attached to a club? If that were the case, no one would go for Collingwood; instead, the Magpies are the best supported team in the league. It’s about so much more than shiny trophies – clubs are about community and being part of something bigger than ourselves. Some clubs might lean left, others to the right, but they do bring together people from all walks of life. Fitzroy fans knew more than anyone that winning wasn’t everything. Just listen to that line in the club song: “in defeat we’ll always try”.
AFL fans are blessed to have a system where the members own the club, rather than some shopping mall developer or well-fed mining magnate from interstate. Fans make a club as much as the players do. More so in some cases.
I recently visited Hamburg’s Millerntor stadium, the home of FC St Pauli. The club is built entirely by its fans. They recently elected a president from the terraces. Visiting the fan bar after the match brought back memories of the pubs around Princes Park when Fitzroy called that place home. You just don’t get that feeling at Etihad Stadium.
St Pauli are currently locked in a relegation battle which could see them drop to the third division. Yet even despite their terrible form, the game was a sellout and dozens of optimistic fans stood outside the ground with hand-drawn signs pleading for spare tickets. Even when they are in the third division, I’m told tickets are hard to come by. That’s the devotion a football club can inspire.
But there is a great shame in being a Fitzroy supporter, because to be one is to not be able to properly socialise within Melbourne culture. Fitzroy supporters are excluded from the social process which keeps a city at the bottom of the world sane. We can’t join in a good-natured ribbing of another team’s misfortune without being told, “Well, at least I have a team.” We walk amongst you, but are the city’s living dead, its untouchables.
When my documentary on the death of the Fitzroy Lions was aired on Radio National and then ABC Local Radio, it cut people deeply. Fifteen years after the fact, people were crying all over again for their beloved old club. One listener had to stop driving, the emotions were still that strong. It was a torturous thing to edit.
Football is too much a part of the fabric of Melbourne for teams to be packed up and moved around the country, as they are in America. But taking out the emotion and just looking at KPIs, the experiment of the Brisbane Lions has been a failure. Its initial success looks increasingly like a castle built on sand. It’s time to bring the Lions home. Let’s get the Royboys back in town.
