‘Means a heap’: Loose pubs, an iconic site, loyal fans — Inside Vic’s lasting Swans, Lions connection

For an instant at the Royal Derby Hotel in Fitzroy on Thursday night, one might have been forgiven for thinking Lions star Charlie Cameron had just kicked a goal to secure the AFL grand final.

A choir resplendent in the colours maroon, blue and gold surged into song once again to belt out the John Denver classic Take Me Home, Country Roads, a favourite of the star Lion.

This was the Gabba reborn in Fitzroy. Every time Cameron kicks a goal in Brisbane, the crowd breaks into his song of choice. And the chorus was every bit as loud on Brunswick St a couple of days out from the grand final, to the surprise of Lions great Alastair Lynch.

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In a national competition, the Sydney Swans and Brisbane have forged a rich foundation for the AFL north of the famed ‘Barassi line’ that once split Aussie rules territory from rugby league country. They are now among the best supported clubs in the country.

But both retain rich links to Melbourne and are proud of this fact. They actively engage with their fanbase in Victoria and embrace the tradition associated with their Fitzroy and South Melbourne history.

At every turn in Fitzroy on Thursday night, and also across South Melbourne, the celebration of the past and present of the grand final aspirants was on display in the lead-in to what is expected to be the highest-rating AFL grand final ever.

Lynch, a guest speaker at The Royal Derby Hotel on Thursday night prior to his appearance on Fox Footy’s AFL 360, was blown away by the crowd in attendance.

“Since the merger of the Brisbane Lions footy club, a huge part of that is 100-plus years of the Fitzroy Footy Club and the ten years of the Brisbane Bears, and I think the club is really strong on recognising, understanding, appreciating and maintaining that history,” he said.

“I think it’s great to see the passion around places like this, the old photos from old Bears days once again, but the old Fitzroy photos are fantastic (and) I think everyone enjoys it. And, I mean, there are a lot of old Fitzroy supporters here, but a lot have also come down from Brisbane as well for the grand final, and they have gone to this pub and other pubs around the suburb.”

It was a raucous atmosphere evident in some of the other pubs in the suburb which serve as museums to another era when the Fitzroy Maroons, Gorillas and then Lions starred.

The Napier Hotel, which served as The Prince of Prussia in the fabulous Jack Irish series starring Guy Pearce, boasts premiership posters from 1898 through to 1944 among other memorabilia strewn throughout the pub.

Hanging over the sinks in the men’s bathroom is a corker of a photo featuring former star forward John Barker in the showers with three-time premiership hero Chris Johnson, who was this week elected to the Brisbane board for his ties back to Fitzroy, after a game.

Walk down Moor St, past a couple of bluestone cobbled laneways and turn right into Fitzroy St, Fitzroy, and The Standard looms in sight.

The front bar is a classic. A moose head decked out with a Lions scarf is eye-catching amid a treasure trove of fabulous memorabilia including a photo of revered legend Kevin Murray, the 1969 Brownlow Medallist.

But it is not just the raucous being celebrated around the suburb. There is also the reverential.

The Brunswick Street Oval, which hosted Fitzroy from its VFA day in 1884 through to their move in 1966 to Princes Park and then the Junction Oval as they sought to find a recipe to survive, was tranquil on Thursday evening bar a for a few kids kicking the footy.

But the Lions will return there on Sunday morning regardless of the result, just as they did after the heartbreaking loss to Collingwood in last year’s grand final.

Club president Andrew Wellington, who also stressed the importance of remembering the briefer history of the Brisbane Bears, had pinned to his scarf a badge of injured ruckman Oscar McInerney on Thursday.

He said the grandstand at its new home base in Springfield in Brisbane was designed in honour of the heritage-protected Brunswick Street Oval built in 1888 and is among the measures the club has taken to ensure its past is not forgotten.

“Our Fitzroy connection has been discussed specifically at board level and it is an area that we have a focus on. We do that in a few different ways,” he said.

“The stand at Brighton Homes Arena (Springfield), for example, is very deliberately architecturally consistent with the grandstand at the Brunswick St Oval.

“It is brick, but when you look at photos from a side-by-side basis, you can see exactly what we were aiming for. That was a very deliberate thing.”

Back towards the city in the Carlton Gardens stands a Moreton Bay Fig Tree on the intersection with Gertrude St, Fitzroy, that intrinsically links the past with the present.

Yorta Yorta man Sir Doug Nicholls, who played 54 games for Fitzroy in the 1930s and became the first Aboriginal man to be knighted in 1972, would address social gatherings on justice and rights for Indigenous Australians when standing near this tree.

Last year the Lions approached the family of the preacher, after whom the AFL’s Indigenous round is named, and received permission to take cuttings from the Moreton Bay Fig Tree.

They were planted by the club’s Indigenous players at the Lions’ Springfield base, forever linking the Lions past with its present.

Lynch, a three-time premiership star with Brisbane who began his career with Fitzroy in the dying days of the club and played with the Bears, had a message for every Queenslander. Go for a wander around the area. Soak in the history. And then wash down your thirst.

“You have to say (they should head to) The Royal Derby, and The Napier is a ripper, but fans should also make sure they get to The Standard. The Standard is a ripper as well. There are great old pubs around here,” he said.

“It means a heap to me, because there was a time with the Bears when they were coming to Melbourne where there was not much support at all, and obviously the merger was tough for a lot of people, but then to build that passionate support wherever the club goes, but especially down here, to have that passionate Lions support in the crowd, and we see it around the streets in Fitzroy as well … it is good.”

A TORTURED PAST

How far both have come from the 1970s when they shared opposite ends of the Albert Park precinct – the Swans at the Lakeside Oval and the Roy Boys at the Junction Oval – and were rattling tins in order to be able to survive another week.

Largely forgotten is that Fitzroy actually played a game in Sydney in 1979, drawing 17,000 fans to the SCG at a time both clubs were broke and considering their options.

South Melbourne were the first to fly the coop when sold to the infamous Doctor Geoffrey Edelsten in the early 1980s.

Champions including Greg Williams and Gerard Healy were brilliant in the midfield, Warwick Capper soared high for marks despite the shortest of shorts and the Swans were entertaining to watch, but the first venture into private ownership ultimately proved a dud.

So, too, did the ownership venture which backed the Brisbane Bears to enter the new national competition in 1987 alongside the better-resourced West Coast Eagles, which hailed from a traditional and strong football state.

Actor Paul Cronin and infamous tycoon Christopher Skase financed the Lions but the financial promises never came to fruition and the Bears were on life support in the 1990s.

Fitzroy fought hard to survive until the end. Some were in favour of merging with North Melbourne to form the North Fitzroy Lions. But the AFL wanted the Brisbane merger.

It still defies belief the final game Fitzroy, a club which won eight VFL premierships, played in the national competition was hosted by Fremantle in Perth.

The Dockers did a fine job in saluting the club but as AFL legend Malcolm Blight said in commentary a week prior in their Victorian farewell against Richmond, if there was to be a goodbye, that should have been the vehicle for it.

The harrowing end to the Lions meant some former players and fans could not stomach being involved with the Queensland reincarnation. Others took decades to overcome their despair and disconnect.

Richard Osborne, for example, told The Age that a phone call in 2019 informing him that he would be inducted into the Lions Hall of Fame reconnected his interest in the club.

Success helps. When Brisbane won its first AFL flag in 2001, footage of Murray standing with pride in his Lions scarf in support of the merged club helped forge new bonds.

“It was a vision of him standing up there with his Lions scarf on after we won the first premiership, that was a great healing moment for the whole club,” Jonathan Brown, a Lions champion and Fox Footy analyst, told the Herald Sun this week.

Others say another step forward occurred when Brown, whose dad Brian was a star with Fitzroy and Essendon, pointed in triumph to the FFC monogram on his jumper after Brisbane’s 2003 premiership.

There was angst when Brisbane switched jumpers in 2010 to the “Paddle Pop Lion” guernsey, with the decision to ditch it in 2013 and move back to the former version a step in the right direction, according to The Roar Deal podcast co-host Dom Fay.

“It’s an interesting one, isn’t it, because you go back, what, 11,12, 13 years now, and there’s the ‘Paddle Pop Lion’ fiasco and it probably felt like the club, at that point, was almost pushing away its Fitzroy history and I think a lot of Fitzroy people felt that,” Fay said.

“But incrementally there’s been steps to reclaim it. Obviously getting the guernsey back was a big part of it, but to be here with this many people here in the Royal Derby, it feels like almost like the club has had marriage counselling between the Brisbane and Fitzroy arms and we’ve worked things out and now we’re a happy union once again.”

The success of the Swans in 2005, and their staggering consistency ever since under Paul Roos and then John Longmire, has ensured they remain a focus in Sydney. The feature in seven grand finals in 20 years is remarkable given the AFL’s equalisation measures.

From Tony Lockett to Adam Goodes to Lance Franklin and now Isaac Heeney, the Swans have had trailblazing champions who are easily identifiable in the New South Wales capital.

“We’ve had a long history of exceptional players who have become … marquee players, incredibly popular players, and you can measure it by the number of guernseys we sell with the number of their backs,” club chairman Andrew Pridham said.

“It used to be that every kid in Sydney had the No.23 (of Franklin) on the back and before that everyone had one with 37 (Goodes) on the back and when you go back to Plugger (Lockett), everyone had the four on the back.

“Now we are seeing lots of fives on the back, so they are clearly great role models. And it is not just Isaac. There are so many of these guys who are cult heroes to Swans people.”

BOX OFFICE GOLD

Watching Sydney and Brisbane play footy in front of packed houses at the SCG and the Gabba over the past season has been breathtaking.

They are box office GOLD and the metrics associated with both clubs underscore just how successful they have become after an extremely testing history.

Pridham is proud of how far the Swans have come from their days in South Melbourne, but equally respectful of the history of the club in Victoria.

The Swans have offices at the Lakeside Oval and will soon open a specialised Swans store in South Melbourne, while The Rising Sun is among pubs in the area regularly packed out whenever the red and white are strutting their stuff at the SCG.

“If you look at the fan bases – the AFL has research and Roy Morgan does the same thing each year – and it measures fandom … and to give you an idea of the impact, the Sydney Swans have the most fans of any sporting code in the country,” Pridham said.

“Let’s call it two million fans, and the Lions are 1.45 million, so they are actually second in terms of the number of fans. Now people will say, ‘Oh. Surely they are not all massive fans’, but the research goes on to say that the core fans, the category they say is the most important, again the Swans have 1.3 million core fans, which is the largest in Australia, and the Lions have one million core fans, which is third behind Collingwood.

“Partly that is because Sydney is New South Wales and Brisbane is Queensland and it is where 52 per cent of the population live and there are only four clubs, and the Swans and Lions dominate their states in terms of fan bases.

“But it has really propelled both clubs to be in a really good position where there are a lot of people who follow them and that ultimately comes through the turnstiles as well. We are having more and more sell-outs. It is a big deal.”

THE HOME AWAY FROM HOME

The MCG will be packed with Sydney and Brisbane fans on Saturday, but both Pridham and Wellington note the strength of their Victorian bases makes them feel at home whenever they venture south to Melbourne.

“Quite often, particularly against some of the smaller Victorian clubs, we will have as many supporters at an away game as the home team does, which is just fantastic and the players love that,” Pridham said.

“Our Melbourne cheer squad is very, very active and passionate and does a great job, so there is a deep love for Sydney in South Melbourne, and I don’t think we’ve lost too much of it in the move. I think we’ve nurtured it.

“What is interesting, and it’s just the way the footy world works, but a lot of the people who were around in 1982 and going to the games are either dead or very old now, without being rude, but what you are seeing is there kids, their grandkids, they’re all fans now. And I think one of the reasons is because we have maintained a connection with the fans in Melbourne.”

Wellington said the Brisbane players noted the strength of the support they received at the MCG last Saturday when launching their comeback from a 25-point deficit against Geelong in the preliminary final.

While the Lions were outnumbered, there were strong pockets of Brisbane fans, with match-sealing star Cam Rayner praising their impact.

“It is a major part of our history as a footy club and every time we come down to Melbourne and spend time in Victoria, we try to get out to Fitzroy for family days and spend time with our fans,” Rayner said.

“I guess when we were going through that rough patch as a club, we didn’t get many games in Melbourne, so to be able to over the last couple of years come down here and play finals and share the enjoyment with our fans, they were unbelievable (in the preliminary final).

“It sounded like the whole MCG was full of Lions supporters and I can bank on them being there again next week. We have such a great support crew in Brisbane and in Fitzroy and hopefully they can all come together next weekend and celebrate with them.”