- Moderator
- #226
Oh so it was only 2 All Australians plus Mal Micheal - Brad Scott - Boyd - a list of only 50 to pick the eyes out of and an enhanced salary cap.
A list of 50? Try 44.
Which were the same conditions afforded to any club that entered into a merger in 1996. The Melbourne Hawks proposed merger conditions were even more generous than what the Brisbane Bears-Fitzroy merger got.
They were:
- $6 million incentive money
- Expanded list of 44 players (same as the Brisbane Lions). The AFL's offer was 50.
- $300,000 extra to the Melbourne Hawks’ salary cap (which was what the Brisbane Lions received)
- Open slather on both lists – with the only restriction being the expanded salary cap. (Brisbane could take 8 players)
- Full participation in pre-draft trading (not afforded to Brisbane) and the draft itself.
- Father-son selections from both Melbourne AND Hawthorn - clubs that had been in the competition since 1925. If the merger had gone ahead, the Melbourne Hawks would have picked up at least six father sons. Brisbane Lions have had two.
And what are you complaining about anyway? Your club endorsed the merger conditions. Your club even made a merger offer to Fitzroy in 1996 seeking to claim those very same merger conditions for your own club. In the end when your extremely 'generous' merger offer was knocked back, Collingwood and Richmond led the charge to water down the above conditons for the Brisbane - Fitzroy merger.
Now that i think of it, it's amazing you guys actually won a game with so many disadvantages.
Oh there were plenty of disadvantages. The way the Brisbane Bears was set up with cast-offs from other clubs, location in a frontier state, no more than 10% of the list from Queensland, limited media coverage and exposure just to name a few.
Direct or indirect, if it wasn't for the merger you don't get those players, you can dice it anyway you like.
Of course without the merger the Brisbane Bears wouldn't have got those players. Neither would other clubs have picked up the likes of Primus, Pike (premiership at North Melbourne), Paxman, Dent and Warfe all of whom went on to have significant careers at their new club.
For example
Brisbane: (8) Brad Boyd (retired 1999), John Barker (to Hawthorn), Simon Hawking (to Sydney), Nick Carter (to Melbourne), Scott Bamford (to Geelong), Shane Clayton (delisted), Chris Johnson, Jarrod Molloy (to Collingwood),
Richmond: (3) Jason Baldwin, Brent Frewen, Matthew Manfield
Collingwood: (2) Brad Cassidy, Marty Warry,
North Melbourne: (3) Brett Chandler, Anthony Mellington, Martin Pike,
St Kilda: (1) Brett Cook,
Hawthorn: (2) Nigel Credlin, Robert McMahon,
West Coast: (1) Trent Cummings,
Western Bulldogs: (1) Matthew Dent
Port Adelaide: (4) Danny Morton, Stephen Paxman, Matthew Primus, John Rombotis
Sydney: (1) Rowan Warfe