A proud Fitzroy fan, Chris Walkley has backed the merged Brisbane Lions from their painful birth. But ask his 10-year-old son, Eamon – decked out in maroon, blue and yellow on a visit to the AFL Footy Festival on Wednesday – what he knows about the Fitzroy Lions, and his face goes blank.
“They wouldn’t have much of an idea,” Walkley says of his son, as well as his two similarly dressed daughters, 12-year-old Kalie and Niamh, seven. “My son does know a little bit, but it’s probably because I go on about it a fair bit, but yeah – they wouldn’t know the Bears, they wouldn’t know the Fitzroy Lions. They’re just all about the here and now.”
In that paradigm, life is sweet for the Walkleys and the rest of Lions fandom. Chasing their first title since the end of their three-peat 20 years ago. Heroic midfielder Lachie Neale fresh off winning a second Brownlow. Preparing for a grand final on Saturday against Collingwood, with much of the nation behind them.
“The whole atmosphere, it’s a little bit … I’d almost forgotten what it was like,” the senior Walkley says.
The memory of 2001 – the first of the Lions’ AFL three-peat – hasn’t left the owner of the Napier Hotel, Guy Lawson. His pub opens on to a roundabout surrounded by a corner park and the grand Fitzroy town hall. “That town hall, that park was full of people,” he says. “The cops couldn’t get a car up the road.”
Alongside the Royal Derby Hotel and the Union Club, the Napier is a venue synonymous with the Fitzroy Lions. The old spirit of the inner Melbourne suburb lives on through the original layout and wood panelling. When Lawson bought the pub in 1997 – one year after the controversial merger with the Brisbane Bears – he salvaged a range of photos, guernseys and other memorabilia from the glory days of the Fitzroy Football Club. They still adorn the front bar.
But where Fitzroy once held a prominent place in Australia rules, its relevance fades. Lawson says his vintage Lions collection is lost on many of his patrons. “I think a lot of people don’t realise there’s any nostalgia at all,” he says. “That’s 1996, that’s last century. A lot of youngies weren’t even born … ‘Now what do you mean Fitzroy?’ They’ve got no idea.”
Across the road, leaving a Brisbane Lions merchandise pop-up at the old town hall on Wednesday afternoon, is painter Pol McMahon. But the man some call “truly a local treasure” of Fitzroy emerges empty-handed. “I was just pleased that there was a chance to get a Fitzroy jumper close to the day and that I’d price one,” he says. “But I don’t have enough money.”
McMahon moved to Fitzroy from Canberra in 1988. “Obviously I wasn’t going to back Carlton or Collingwood because of their less humane properties,” he says. But like many, McMahon refused to accept Brisbane as his club. “It was our team, and, much like the property development that goes on, they’ve taken our team, they’ve taken the ground from under our feet.”
Walkley says his father – another lifelong Fitzroy fan – was of a similar view, and refused to back Brisbane. Instead his father switched allegiances to Hawthorn, “to give them some money, and essentially as a middle finger to the AFL. At the time Hawthorn was supposed to merge with Melbourne and they were sort of the next ones on the chopping block.”
But Walkley is one of a small group committed to keeping the Fitzroy line intact. The 51-year-old was seven when he first saw the Lions, in a match against the Mapgies at Victoria Park. “Collingwood didn’t kick a goal until the last quarter,” Walkley says. “I was already keen, and well, I was rusted on after that.”
Chris’s wife, Cazz Walkley, was there for much of the journey, including the fateful day in 1996. “I remember when they folded and being with him and just, that sadness,” she says. Fitzroy lost their final game in Melbourne to Richmond by 151, in a match attended by Walkley. “Just out and out sadness, even though the merger had already been announced, that was the death of Fitzroy.”
He threw his support behind the merged entity, which brought together the struggling 10-year-old Brisbane Bears expansion side, and the eight-time VFL winners. But there were teething issues. “The atmosphere, and the way the crowd saw the footy was a little bit different,” Walkley says. “But like all sorts of families, you take your in-laws and you love them, warts and all.”
He now is part of a group of 150 Melbourne-based Lions fans – around four-fifths with ties to back Fitzroy – that regularly watch games. “While it was divisive for a lot of people,” Walkley says, “I think for a lot of people, it was great.”
Even McMahon has found it hard to resist this week’s celebrations. “There’s half a chance I’ll go to the MCG and make an MCG painting and come back and buy a jumper,” he says. “I’ll have to work quick.”
Lawson has no plans to remove the salvaged Lions memorabilia from his front bar, helping resist the slow drift of the Fitzroy Football Club from memory. But he is actually a long-suffering St Kilda fan. “I wish we would have gone to Brisbane,” he says, only half jokingly.
