"THE loyal members of the Fitzroy Football Club had little to celebrate seven years ago when it looked like their beloved team was finally washed up.

Forced by financial difficulties into a merger with the Brisbane Bears in 1997, many of the club's strongest supporters were disillusioned and disappointed.

Coincidentally, yesterday's Grand Final parade fell on the club's 120th anniversary and as the Lions rode triumphantly through the streets of Melbourne, the once forlorn fans had plenty of reason to celebrate.

The team is now just one win away from the game's first premiership "three-peat" in 46 years. On Tuesday night, the club held a dinner to mark 120 years since the first meeting of the Fitzroy Lions and it was a chance to chew over old times, and enthuse about the success of a Brisbane-based team.

For Fitzroy's secretary, Bill Atherton it was a chance to reminisce about the club which now has 1100 members, including 773 shareholders in a publicly listed company and has already won a 2003 premiership with its Melbourne team - the Fitzroy Reds in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.

Mr Atherton remembers hearing stories of how his grandmother used to sneak into Fitzroy games for free in the 1884 season.

He said the Fitzroy club was an institution in Melbourne where AFL is treated with the reverence of a religion.

"People in Brisbane and Sydney where football is all new and shiny, probably don't understand the passion that has gone from generation to generation as Roy Boys or fans of the Bombers or Magpies.

"The great thing this year was when the Lions wore a Fitzroy Heritage jumper in beating Collingwood and we reckon we had 25,000 Fitzroy fans at the game. A lot of them hadn't been to the football in seven years."

Mr Atherton noted that Fitzroy won the then VFL Premiership in 1904 and 1905 and said that it would be great if the Brisbane Lions would go one better in 2003.

Not to be outdone by ties to a tradition, a Queenslander in front of the stage at the end of yesterday's parade held a banner proclaiming "Bring Back the Bears" in honour of the Brisbane Bears, who had taken the sport in Queensland in from a financial basket case in the early 1990's to the AFL finals in 1996."