Fitzroy Bulldogs


The Fitzroy Bulldogs was a proposed Australian rules football club which was to have formed from the merger between the Fitzroy Lions and the Footscray Bulldogs, and was to have competed in the Victorian Football League from 1990. The merger was arranged in October 1989 to avert the imminent financial collapse of the Footscray Football Club, but it was abandoned within three weeks of its announcement after Footscray supporters raised almost A$2 million and secured sponsorship and funding to ensure their club's solvency and viability into the future.

Background

Until the 1980s, the Victorian Football League was one of seven nominally equivalent top-level state-based Australian rules football competitions in Australia that were administered at a national level by the National Football League. However, the higher population and greater money available in Melbourne meant the VFL was the de facto highest level of competition in Australia, with the ability to attract the strongest players from interstate. Throughout the 1980s, the VFL began to expand to teams based outside Victoria: the league had looked to establish a new club in Sydney in 1982 before the South Melbourne Football Club elected to relocate there instead, and newly established clubs based in Perth and south-eastern Queensland were admitted to the league in 1987. Thus, the VFL was becoming a national competition.
At the same time, the rising cost of players and administration was severely affecting the weaker clubs as the league expanded around them. Seven of Melbourne's eleven VFL clubs faced financial ruin at different times during the 1980s: it was financial pressures that drove South Melbourne to relocate to Sydney in 1982; more than $1,000,000 of debt and the effect of losing the Junction Oval as a home ground almost drove to relocate to Brisbane, merge with, or fold at the end of 1986; while, and all struggled with extensive debts. Many clubs were saved from bankruptcy only by the dividends they received from the $4,000,000 licence fees charged to Brisbane and West Coast, as well as the $4,000,000 earned when the Sydney Swans were sold to Dr Geoffrey Edelsten in 1985, but these cash injections provided only temporary relief, and they did nothing to address the ailing long-term viability of the clubs.

Footscray's decline

The Footscray Football Club had been in financial trouble throughout the 1980s, and it had faced pressure to stay afloat, leading them to investigate several options, including relocation to Brisbane as early as 1982.
By 1989, its financial position was terminal. The club was more than $2,000,000 in debt, and it was forecast to post a $800,000 operating loss in 1989. The club's location in Melbourne's working-class inner western suburbs and the poor quality of facilities at its home ground at the Western Oval were hindering its ability to gain corporate support; in fact, the ground's grandstand had been declared a fire hazard in 1988, and the club was already facing pressure to play its games elsewhere. A couple of decades of generally mediocre on-field performances were also contributing to declining attendances, and finishing second-last on the ladder in 1989 had accelerated the decline.
The VFL had been concerned about Footscray's financial position throughout the year, and required that the club prove its ongoing viability to hold its place in the league; it was widely recognised that the club needed a big off-field change to survive. The Footscray Council had offered the club a package worth more than $1,600,000, which included a $600,000 direct cash injection, $400,000 to upgrade facilities at Western Oval, and its assistance to secure $600,000 in sponsorships, but the league rejected this as another temporary solution which failed to address the root cause of its problems.
Seeing few other options, Footscray president Nick Columb, who had been involved with the club for about ten years but had been elected president only in March 1989, began negotiations for a merger. He had approached all of the league's struggling clubs, eliciting some interest from and no interest from and, but it was discussions with the Fitzroy Football Club which provided the strongest case. Although Fitzroy's financial position had improved since it almost relocated to Brisbane in 1987, its position was still weak, with around $600,000 of debts, and while its immediate solvency was secure, its long-term viability was not, meaning that Fitzroy president Leon Wiegard was willing to merge.
The clubs and the VFL executive, under CEO Ross Oakley, agreed to terms for a merger, and the merger plan was announced to the public on 3 October 1989, three days after the 1989 grand final; Footscray's licence to compete in the VFL was immediately terminated. The negotiations were carried out secretly, and it was not until the plans were leaked on 2 October by former Footscray general manager Dennis Galimberti, who learned of the plans at the club's best and fairest dinner and later became prominent in the campaign against the merger, that the merger became public knowledge.
It is believed that, if the merger had not been announced, the VFL would have appointed an administrator within the week, Footscray would have been placed into liquidation, and the club would have folded.

Merger arrangements

A set of proposed arrangements for the merger was negotiated with the VFL executive, which would have given the merged club a strong starting position for the future. The key points of the proposal were:
  • The club would be known as the Fitzroy Football Club, with the team known as the Fitzroy Bulldogs.
  • The club would wear Fitzroy's colours: red, blue and gold.
  • Home games would be played at Princes Park in the inner northern suburb of North Carlton, relatively near to Fitzroy. The ground would be shared between and Fitzroy.
  • The club would train at Western Oval, Footscray's home ground.
  • The VFL would clear Footscray's and Fitzroy's existing debts, which combined to $3,400,000: to do this, it would use the regular dividends and allocations which would otherwise have gone to a stand-alone Footscray club over the next few years until the debt was repaid. This gave the merged club the opportunity to begin its existence debt-free.
  • The new club board would comprise four members of the former Fitzroy board and four members of the former Footscray board. It would be chaired by Fitzroy president Leon Wiegard, while Footscray president Nick Columb would not be involved.
  • The club could compile its 58-man playing list for 1990 from any players currently on the Footscray and Fitzroy lists; to this end, the club would be permitted to exceed the league's salary cap by whatever amount was necessary in 1990 and 1991 to honour existing contracts.
  • The club would not participate in the 1989 VFL Draft.
  • The 26 players not retained by the merged club would enter a dispersal draft: the first eight selections would go to the struggling, and the remaining 11 clubs would receive one selection each in reverse ladder order. The seven players still not selected could then be signed or drafted under normal protocols.
  • The club would operate two separate Under-19s teams, one at Fitzroy and one at Footscray, for three seasons to avoid disadvantaging players already in the existing clubs' junior systems, before operating a single Under-19s team afterwards.
  • The club would establish a junior development academy at Western Oval.
Had the merger gone ahead, these arrangements could still have been amended, as they needed to be approved by a three-quarters majority of the remaining 12 clubs. When the merger was averted, the vote was cancelled.

Response

The announcement was met with strong anger from Footscray fans. While the merged club was to retain the Bulldogs nickname, the other three areas which most clearly defined the club's identity – its name, colours and home ground – would have come from Fitzroy. For this reason, the merger was seen by Footscray fans as a takeover by Fitzroy. Class warfare became a very strong theme in the response from Footscray fans, with the merger being portrayed as a club from the working-class western suburbs being taken over by the club from the "silvertail" inner suburbs. The secretive nature of the merger negotiations, and the lack of consultation with members, also drove much of the anger from fans. The Essendon Football Club, which was the next-most western club remaining in the league, received inquiries from many Footscray fans who planned to switch allegiance to the Bombers if the merger went ahead.
The response from Fitzroy fans, who had endured merger and relocation discussions only three years earlier, was far less negative than the response from Footscray fans, in large part because this merger preserved more of Fitzroy's identity and did not require a relocation. Many Fitzroy players, on the other hand, were upset by the merger proposal because the playing group would be broken up by the merger, and many fringe players were fearful for their jobs. Players commented that they had almost unanimously favoured relocation to Brisbane over a merger with Melbourne in 1987 for exactly this reason.
The merger was a blow to football representation in the inner western suburbs, as the region had already seen one of its two Victorian Football Association clubs, Yarraville, drop out of the competition and go into recess before the start of 1984, and Sunshine had withdrawn from the VFA during the 1989 season, its future still uncertain. There was some discussion that a new Footscray Football Club, or a wider western suburban club in partnership with Sunshine, could be established in the VFA to retain a high level senior football club in the region, with the possibility that it could form an informal developmental partnership with the Fitzroy Bulldogs similar to those enjoyed between and Geelong West or and Preston, but these discussions progressed no further before the merger was abandoned.
As far as the football world was concerned, the merger was all but finalised. Newspapers began running predictions of the Fitzroy Bulldogs' on-field prospects for 1990, and plaques bearing Footscray's and Fitzroy's logos were taken down from the façade at VFL Park.