How did you start supporting the Brisbane Lions?

[LongLion]

Born in Geelong into three generations of Cats supporters so I had no choice......until the Bears came into my life. Loved watching them slowly but surely get better and better. One day I declared to my family I was now a Bear.....I was in my forties by then so figured I will make up my own mind.......oh boy, it did not go down well.

...but I stuck to my guns...then the merger, that threw me a bit as it did everyone from both clubs but I decided to get over it and continue cheering on our boys...

...I have never ever regretted it. I saw 3 flags before Cats finally won their 1st in decades.

Let the good times roll on and on

That was very brave of you at the time MM but clearly the correct decision with many benefits (& tears) to follow.

 

[Ray Button]

Although a native QldLander, I spent a significant part of my life in Adelaide, and followed my local team Glenelg from the late '60s, thus had strongly developed anti-Vic sentiments as the VFL continually 'stole' SANFL's best players.
I recall being quite annoyed in '86 when the Bears and West Coast were formed as VFL extensions - I felt that a proper, less skewed national comp could have been a reality if the various State leagues had held out instead of joining the VFL.
Nonetheless I still kept an interested eye on the Bears but also supported the Crows a few short years later. We moved back to Qld in the mid-1990s and Brisbane quickly became our first team with an ongoing soft spot for the Crows.
Have now been members for over 25 years and thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

 

[Leuy LongerCombo]

Some interesting reading to see how other have come around to supporting the mighty lions. Being a non traditional state, with the the Fitzroy and Bears heritage, there is some diverse reasonings, which is great.

For me, being from Tassie there’s was obviously no local influence. Family is a mix match of supporters, Father - Hawks, Mother - Richmond, Brothers - Hawks/Bombers and grandfather who I really began to watch footy with was a Blue bagger through and through.
For me, as a kid I was fascinated with Koalas, so a very simple and easy reason for a 5y.o.

I really enjoyed growing up having so many different supporters in the family, always interest in multiple games. I was always planning to let my children pick their own team, until I picked my then 5y.o daughter up from her grandmothers place, stating how she now a Richmond and Dusty supporter.

After a sit down, I told her she has two choices who to go for, either you go for Brisbane or you go hungry. I now have companion supporter in the house, who just loves watching Charlie play, so a win all round.

 

[RoyBoy17]

Great read this thread. Very good idea. Interesting to read everyone’s stories

 

[Pride of lions]

My first football memory is being at Brunswick St oval with my dad and grandfather around 1957 when I was about 5. They had both been Fitzroy supporters since sometime in the 1930’s when my dad was a kid. We used to travel all over Melbourne every Saturday to watch them play. Kevin Murray was my hero and I had his number sewn onto my Fitzroy jumper.
There was very little success but we followed them religiously through the decades until they finally were shut down and sent to Brisbane. By then my dad and grandfather had passed away but me and my children became foundation members of the Lions and have continued ever since. Being at the 2001 Grand Final was amazing,it always seemed like I would never see a Lions premiership,and to be able to share a beer with my son at the after match at Rod Laver Arena was a very special moment. My dad never saw a premiership in his lifetime,the only one occurring in 1944 when he was a young man fighting in the war,so we toasted his memory together. And the next day we went back to Brunswick Street for the premiership celebrations,back to where it all began for my family so many years before. It was a very moving experience. And then to win 2 more was unbelievable! Hopefully another one this year too!

 

[Voss the boss]

Before shopping in op shops was cool - my mother would have to visit these places to see what was available. I am told that on one said visit as a 4 year old, I came across a jumper with the No 4 on it. This jumper happened to be a Fitzroy one! I had to have this jumper and so it began! I went to a primary school with no uniform and in every school photo from prep to grade 6 you can find me easily, as i wore my Fitzroy jumper each time, and even occasionally my red headband as well.

 

[Jimmy Two Hands]

Dad was a South Melbourne fan who never really emotionally went with them to Sydney and moved to Brisbane for work in 86 and adopted the Bears, who were born at the same time as me. I grew up a Bears fan going to odd games here and there, until 95 when we got season tickets and then it became my obsession.

Obviously the premiership years incredibly special and the last few years too, but 96 still might be my favourite season.

 

[MacMum]

That was very brave of you at the time MM but clearly the correct decision with many benefits (& tears) to follow.

Yes, I was very brave indeed....they thought I was joking at first then realised I was seriously serious.

 

[Hanley]

I grew up in Canberra as a mad Raiders and Brumbies fan. We called AFL 'aerial ping pong' in the school yard. I had one friend who was a big Demons fan and I watched a game at his house once in around 1999 and being contrary supported the team Melbourne happened to be playing - the Brisbane Lions. Loved Aka and Lynch and from there if asked said I was a Lions fan. Might have watched 3-4 footy games a year for five years then moved to Melbourne and the love of the game caught fire. Living near Fitzroy strengthened the connection and became a big Lions fan, crystallizing through a love of big Browny and then then young three Rs coming through. Left Melbourne in 2013 but still watch every Lions game heart-in-mouth and just love the story of Fagan's Lions coming from 130-against on average each game to expecting a win every time. A premiership this year would cap the fan's journey so nicely having only been a 'if they happen to be on tv when I have nothing to do' barracker in the last premiership era!

 

[3KZ is Football]

Fitzroy supporter. Parents were Fitzroy supporters. Brothers were Fitzroy supporters. I am still a Fitzroy Member.

 

[Mr Ripper]

I grew up in a multi-generational Fitzroy supporting household, so naturally enough, I decided I'd barrack for Carlton.

That fling with evil didn't last long and once I was taken to my first VFL game, this game,



I converted.

I would have been happy for the club to move to Brisbane holus bolus in 1986. That didn't eventuate (it should have) and, apart from the competitive seasons of 1989, 92 & 93, the remaining ten years consisted of just turning up to the footy (in ever-decreasing numbers) knowing we were going to get thrashed and wondering why we bothered. It was masochism to the extreme.

By the time got real, I had already accepted that Fitzroy, as Fitzroy, would no longer be a part of the big league. The concern was whether a reasonably fair merger could be achieved or, the unthinkable, if everything fell over and Fitzroy disappeared from the AFL completely.

That evening, July 4, 1996, when the news came through that the BB/FFC merger was a done deal, I punched the air. Such was my relief that ordeal was over, I wasn't even frothing at the mouth over Noel Gordon's Footy Show appearance later that night.

So, yeah, 27 years on, still 'ere.

 

[scott_the_man]

2001 was the year I was old enough to realise what was happening in the game of footy. That happened to be the first year of the three peat and I jumped on the bandwagon as they were the best side at the time.

 

[LongLion]

Although a native QldLander, I spent a significant part of my life in Adelaide, and followed my local team Glenelg from the late '60s, thus had strongly developed anti-Vic sentiments as the VFL continually 'stole' SANFL's best players.
I recall being quite annoyed in '86 when the Bears and West Coast were formed as VFL extensions - I felt that a proper, less skewed national comp could have been a reality if the various State leagues had held out instead of joining the VFL.
Nonetheless I still kept an interested eye on the Bears but also supported the Crows a few short years later. We moved back to Qld in the mid-1990s and Brisbane quickly became our first team with an ongoing soft spot for the Crows.
Have now been members for over 25 years and thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

Being a Glenelg supporter of the same vintage I wondered if the Ray Button moniker referred to the Ray Button?

 

[dlanod]

I decided I'd barrack for Carlton.

I always knew there was something off...

 

[irel]

Migrant kid arrived in Australia in early 70's. Family settled in Melbourne. Did not speak English but was a very sporty kid and watched any sport that was on telly. In those days Aussie Rules was predominant sport on telly in Victoria, lucky to catch anything else really. So by sheer weight of propaganda I got interested first in Cricket and then Aussie Rules. On Sundays I would watch "World of Sport" should have been called World of VFL because 99% was devoted to the indigenous game and a five minute news snippet on anything else going around the world in other sports.

I was and still am an underdog type of supporter anyhow and Fitzroy was the poster team for the underdogs in the VFL. The colors resonated with me also so slowly as a kid I become a Fitzroy Lions follower. Very few of us in my school, others mostly Collingwood, Carlton etc.. so the dislike for those teams was a natural development.

When the Bears come to exist I adopted them as my second team because any underdog that can compete and win against the Vic centric teams it brought me pleasure. So I lived through the period when the VFL manufactured a scenario to rid Fitzroy Lions from the competition. The heartache was painful and residues still linger. If Fitzroy had merged with any other team as there were moves to have Collingwood take over the club, or Norff (thank god) I would have just moved on and not followed any other team. Because it was The Bears it softened the blow. Rewards followed.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Growing up in Tassie the allegiances of everyone I knew was a smattering of the old VFL teams, with lots of Hawthorn, Essendon and St Kilda supporters. My father was a Queenslander so that was probably a key factor in my decision making to follow the Bears, not that it was really forced upon me.

I was probably a Broncos fan before I became a Bears fan, and probably a Queensland Origin supporter before that even. Fair to say there may have been a little more force involved in that original decision. I believe "you want to go for New South Wales you can go outside and find your own dinner" may have been the sentiments

Then when the merger happened I was really quite pleased. Being only a young club, and being pretty young myself, I wasn't really too concerned about losing any of the "culture" the Bears had built up over their 10 years of existence.

I also thought it would give us a fan base in Melbourne which in finals might be important (and I feel it has been). Certainly the support we receive there now is very different to the support we used to get in the early 90s, which was on about the same level as GWS now.

One thing I did find out pretty early on was that it was rare to get Bears, and later, Lions games, on free to air TV coverage in Tassie, or even on radio. Tassie TV would generally take whatever game was on involving Vic teams, and even in the 90s we only had 1 and then 2 commercial stations, which were combinations of 7, 9 and 10.

So on the nights say the Bledisloe Cup was on 10 and the AFL was on 7, sometimes the AFL game would get shafted. We might be lucky to get a replay at 11pm. And the radio coverage was generally even worse: on weekends during the day ABC Radio generally took our local TFL matches ahead of the AFL, while night time coverage was sparse.

I soon learnt however that it was sometimes possible to pick up radio stations from interstate. This seemed to work better (a) at night and (b) on a car radio. I'm not sure why these two factors, but I'm sure "science" has plenty to do with it.

So armed with my knowledge of ABC Radio stations gleaned from multiple editions of the ABC Cricket Book, there were many nights spent wheeling the old man's car out into the paddock so I could pick up games from the Gabba on 4QR 612 (as long as there wasn't an important NRL game on at the same time), or 5AN 891 if they were playing in Adelaide.

3LO 774 was generally the only one I could pick up during the day, and then only from the car. It was generally pretty hit and miss whether I was able to pick up 4QR, but one memorable, particularly still and clear evening, I was able to pick up 6WF 720 from Perth for a game against the Eagles.

And sometimes our games simply weren't broadcast at all. So the best we had was the "around the grounds" updates from someone who to be perfectly honest probably didn't give a stuff either way anyway.

So "going to the football" was never an option, in fact it was something that didn't even cross my mind till probably the mid 2000s. In 2006, armed with a new-found source of income called a "salary" I took a spur of the moment flight to Melbourne for a game against Collingwood at the G. We lost, and I wouldn't see our boys get up live in the flesh until 2014 when they beat the Dogs under the roof.

Moving to Sydney gave me the opportunity to get to more games. The first time I saw us at the Gabba was against West Coast in 2019. I went with an Eagles supporting mate, who spent the first 40 minutes of the game absolutely giving it to me, and then didn't say boo for the rest of the night. It was glorious.

The 2nd time I saw them at the Gabba was the win over Geelong later that year. Being at the end where McCarthy took THAT mark, you could see it coming even before the ball went inside 50. Then the last minute or so was played down the far end in the shade and we couldn't see a thing I remember getting updates from a mate on Facebook messaging me how many seconds were left. It was before the AFL app had the countdown option.

Now I live in Brisbane, go to every game I can (home and away) and have Kayo for the ones I can't. Times have sure changed. I have a lot of ground to make up, but I'm getting there.

 

[dlanod]

I soon learnt however that it was sometimes possible to pick up radio stations from interstate. This seemed to work better (a) at night and (b) on a car radio. I'm not sure why these two factors, but I'm sure "science" has plenty to do with it.

My basic knowledge of EM suggests:
(a) less interference from stuff like the sun
(b) longer antenna

 

[Jakev0]

Born in Melbourne and moved to Brisbane in 94. Had no idea about the game until I remember staying up with Dad after midnight watching the Bears vs Freo game in 1996 (same game where Shaun Hart

Shaun Hart

Age

54

Ht

175cm

Wt

74kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

16.1

4star

K

10.5

4star

HB

5.6

4star

M

3.5

4star

T

2.1

4star

No current season stats available

D

24.2

5star

K

15.2

5star

HB

9.0

5star

M

5.0

5star

T

2.6

4star

soccered through the goal in the dying minutes to snatch a win).

The next year, at school in grade 3, we had Auskick reps visit and went to a try out that weekend and fell in love with the game. That same year, I went to my first AFL game at the Gabba against Adelaide. I remember made a small banner saying 'Brisbane are better than Adelaide' i think. The Crows supporters near us thought it was 'cute', but as an 8 year old at the time, I thought it was a good effort lol. I got the last laugh though as the Lions smashed them that night.

The family became members in 1998-2000 and stopped after that that because they couldnt afford it i think. Dad was a Pies supporter and Mum a Tigers supporter growing up, but are now Lions fans through and through.

I went to the odd game in the 2000s and 2010s (the 2009 final against Carlton was right up there for best games ive seen live), but i started seeing more games in 2018 when the Lions started to becomea bit more competitive.

Got a Lions membership for the 2019 season for a Xmas present and been a member ever since!

 

[MSB ROYS]

Born in Melbourne and moved to Brisbane in 94. Had no idea about the game until I remember staying up with Dad after midnight watching the Bears vs Freo game in 1996 (same game where Shaun Hart soccered through the goal in the dying minutes to snatch a win).

The next year, at school in grade 3, we had Auskick reps visit and went to a try out that weekend and fell in love with the game. That same year, I went to my first AFL game at the Gabba against Adelaide. I remember made a small banner saying 'Brisbane are better than Adelaide' i think. The Crows supporters near us thought it was 'cute', but as an 8 year old at the time, I thought it was a good effort lol. I got the last laugh though as the Lions smashed them that night.

The family became members in 1998-2000 and stopped after that that because they couldnt afford it i think. Dad was a Pies supporter and Mum a Tigers supporter growing up, but are now Lions fans through and through.

I went to the odd game in the 2000s and 2010s (the 2009 final against Carlton was right up there for best games ive seen live), but i started seeing more games in 2018 when the Lions started to becomea bit more competitive.

Got a Lions membership for the 2019 season for a Xmas present and been a member ever since!

Welcome! Don't let this be your first and only post...

 

[growler]

Round 1 2005 after we moved to Brissie from the country. Scott bros v Nick Reiwoldt was my first game as a paid up member. Absolutely as hooked now as I was then.

 

[alscotoz2]

Parents emigrated in 1981. Never heard of, never mind seen, Aussie rules. Lived in Victoria and twigged pretty quickly that having a team would be helpful getting to know other kids. First game I ever saw was a Saturday night replay on channel 7, essendon Vs Fitzroy. Fitzroy won and that was it. Later learned there wasn't many lions supporters around and essendon were also called the Dons, the nickname of my 'proper' football team.

I went back overseas for a long period of time and during those awful winters my lions VFL scarf got put to good use. Coincidentally returned to Australia just before Fitzroy folded. Saw their last game at the MCG. It was sad. I was going to walk away from the game but realised that Brisbane were doing a lot of things to maintain the Fitzroy heritage so decided to give it a go for a year. Became a member in 1997, went to 2001 GF, let membership lapse when I had kids, moved to country, and although still attending matches only bought membership again last year for me and my son. Attending last weekend against PA was pretty special. Hoping for 2 more pretty special days before the season ends. Would love to snag a couple of GF tickets and think I would give my ticket to my other son who also follows the club, just doesn't get chance to go to many games. I figure they don't come around often and I've been lucky enough to attend one. Going to PF next weekend would keep me happy...as long as we win!!

 

[PTizzle]

Moved to the Sunshine Coast from Darwin in 94 and fell in love with AFL over the next few years. My family were much more into rugby (both league and union) and half-heartedly supported the Eagles, which I am ashamed to say I did for a few years as well.

I remember turning the football on in the final round of 1998, where the lowly Lions were taking on the Saints, who just had to win to lock in a top 4 spot. The Lions were guaranteed the spoon and apart from the retirement of Andrew Bews, seemingly didn't have a whole lot to play for. I remember watching the Lions clawing back a deficit after half-time and scoring a one-point victory against these top 4 fancies, after which I immediately knew this was the team I was going to barrack for as long as I lived.

Funnily enough, soon after that we moved to Perth, which made the Eagles to Lions switch a bit harder, but I've had so many good times with this club and wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Ray Button]

Being a Glenelg supporter of the same vintage I wondered if the Ray Button moniker referred to the Ray Button?

I've mentioned this previously - I'm certainly not THE Ray Button (I believe he's passed on now), but Ray epitomised Aussie Rules in the 60s/70s as a high-flying Glenelg half-forward when the game was completely different.
I'm still a bit anti Interchanges as I reckon it takes the virtue of stamina out of the game which is increasingly becoming like a game of basketball on a very large court.
But I have to admit that the odd special game like the Lions' last one really gets the blood flowing!

 

[WhiteLionFeva]

Supported Fitzroy from a very young age. Dad's uncle played for the Roys back in the 40's so it's the team we boys have followed ever since (Mum and my sister were always South Melbourne supporters). My earliest footy memories are from the early 60's. In the late 70's and throughout the 80's I hardly missed a match.
By the early 90's it was becoming increasingly clear that the AFL had Fitzroy in its sights and the club's days were numbered, so if they were to merge Brisbane was my preferred option over the Kangaroos, especially as I had something of a connection to Brisbane, having spent 5 years up there in the mid to late 60's.
As a young lawyer I was involved in the process that led to the appointment of an administrator to the Roys, which ultimately sealed their fate. Not a situation I was totally comfortable with at the time, but subsequent events confirm it was the right outcome, for the merged club and me at least. I accept that not everyone who followed the Roys will agree.
I still go and watch the Roys in the amateurs from time to time. Great to see they have made it to A grade for next season, a remarkable achievement given where they have come from.
Sorry not to have been able to see more Brisbane Lions games in person in the ensuing years, but very fortunate to have attended all three of our winning Grand Finals with my Dad who has since passed, as well as our loss in 2004. Looking to make another GF this year. Go Lions (and Roys).

 

[Berrygood]

I grew up in country Qld, born 1965, so I'm 9 or 10 mid 70's when sport grabs ya. I was always aware of Aussie rules football, dad played as a young lad in Brisbane, he would take notice of it on telly n talk about it. We were taught the game in primary school and played it sometimes. Only got to see the GF each year on telly.

As a beer drinking good night out bloke in the 90's I moved to Brisbane and would find myself on the hill at the Gabba watching on occasions. Always enjoyed a day or night at the footy, was well aware of the Bears/Lions. Still tho I hadn't settled on a team or was a regular watcher.

It wasn't till my sister started going out with then marrying a Collingwood supporter from Melbourne. Tats n all. I had to find something to be able to talk to him about. Footy was going to be it. I was a Qld bloke, no way I was going to support Collingwood, it had to be a Qld team so I jumped on the Lions proper 1997. Suffered thru his know it all Collingwood bullshit but was pig in shit when we beat them in 02, 03. I can still see him cringe at the mention of Acker.

Every season I've grown a greater appreciation of the game, and have become more and more invested in the club.