Fitzroy memories #3
The only year I lived in Melbourne and got to see football whenever I pleased was 1991. Fitzroy had a very good team, but failed to put it all together on most occasions and finished second bottom.
It was the year after we lost Gary Pert to Collingwood in a bitter pay dispute, and with hindsight it was probably the beginning of the end.
Richard Osborne was captain because Paul Roos relinquished the role in protest. Other handy players included Alastair Lynch, Matthew Armstrong, Paul Broderick and John Blakey.
Our home ground was Princes Park. I lived at West Preston and sometimes took the tram down St George’s Road and Brunswick Street, either walking along Johnston Street to Carlton, or going into the city and getting another tram out to the ground.
I think it was Robert Shaw’s first year as coach and there were high expectations pre-season given the talented list. Melbourne blew us away in the opening round by 131 points!
I saw six other games that year and we actually won three of them, including a 10-goal triumph against Richmond at the MCG.
That underlines the quality of the team. We defeated eventual premier West Coast in the final round for only the fourth win of the season. I missed that one because I was in Zimbabwe.
With a mate from work I used to visit some of the old-time pubs in Fitzroy before they became trendy. There were some rough places, but mostly it was a fascinating experience to absorb the character of the suburb.
The Lord Newry, opposite the Brunswick Street Oval, was typical, like stepping back into the 1940s. Most of those pubs had historical Fitzroy photos on the walls. I wonder if they still do?
Back to the 91 season, one of my favorite all-time games was our one-point win against North Melbourne in round 22. It was a high-scoring game 22.16 to 21.21.
The pub gossip explaining our failure that year was that captain Richard Osborne didn’t have the respect of his teammates. I heard that from a club official. Don’t know how much truth there was in it, but he didn’t lead the team in 1992.
After 1991 I lived interstate until we moved to Porepunkah in 1997. I saw no games in 1992, but took holidays in the winter of subsequent years to watch a few, and made weekend flights on three occasions.
Our last year, 1996, was totally miserable, of course. When there was talk we might fold mid-season I drove across from Eden to see us play Geelong at Whitten Oval. We lost by 127 points.
I flew in from Merimbula to watch the last “home” game at Princes Park against Brisbane. It was a meloncholy occasion for most of the 6466 who turned up.
Fitzroy was thumped, but the score was irrelevant. Most of us were in shock. Some people sang the theme song for most of the final quarter. Kids were crying. There was some ugliness given that Brisbane was our opponent that day and their president had made some insensitive remarks in the media.
There must have been 200 or so security guards around the oval when the game finished. That didn’t stop a lot of people from streaming onto the ground, and I remember several being crashed and hurt in tackles by the guards.
I didn’t attend the last Victorian game the following week against Richmond. There were 49,000 people at that one to say farewell.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
