The Fitzroy Football Club, formerly nicknamed The Lions, is an Australian rules football club formed in 1883 to represent the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria and was a foundation member club of the Victorian Football League (now the Australian Football League) on its inception in 1897. The club experienced some early success in the league and was the first club to win a VFL Grand Final. It also achieved a total of eight VFL premierships between 1898 and 1944.
The club ran into financial difficulties in the 1980s after decades of poor on-field performance and was forced to merge its playing operations with the Brisbane Bears at the end of the 1996 season to form the Brisbane Lions, the latter of which won three consecutive premierships between 2001 and 2003.
The Fitzroy Football Club Ltd came out of administration after the merger of its AFL playing operations in late 1998. For a brief time it experimented in partnerships with other semi professional and amateur clubs before incorporating the Fitzroy Reds (formerly University Reds) to play in the Victorian Amateur Football Association. Fitzroy largely resumed its original VFL-AFL identity through its continued use of their 1975–1996 VFL-AFL jumper, their theme song and their 1884–1966 home ground at the Brunswick Street Oval. Fitzroy Football Club resumed as a playing club in the D1 section of the VAFA in 2009. The club achieved promotion to Premier B for the 2013 season.
Read more about Fitzroy Football Club: Team of The Century
Famous quotes containing the words football and/or club:
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We have ourselves to answer for.”
—“Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, pp. 24-5 (January 1870)