"With the famous lion's head on the front and its . . . er, hind quarters plastered across the back of it, the Brisbane Lions' new alternate guernsey was always going to raise some eyebrows.

But it's not just the bum-on-the-back factor, described as "a bit silly" by Bill Atherton, the secretary of Fitzroy Football Club Ltd, that has upset Fitzroy diehards.

What really disappointed Atherton when he saw an artwork of the new jersey for the first time yesterday was that the dominance of yellow. "It looks more like a Hawthorn jumper to me," he said. "There's too much yellow."

Fitzroy's original colours were predominantly maroon and blue with splashes of gold, colours that Brisbane maintained as part of its 1996 Fitzroy merger agreement. But despite the gold/yellow coming to the fore in the "away" strip, at least it won't be seen in Melbourne (well not yet anyway) because the only 2005 game that it will be used in will be Brisbane's round-14 "away" game against Melbourne to be played at the Gabba.

That doesn't temper Atherton's disappointment, though, because his fear is that in future years, the new jumper may be used more often, and in Melbourne."