A Fitzroy supporter since childhood, Findlay saw her first home game at the Brunswick Street oval at 13.  Her passion for the club is unwavering.  She is still a Director of the club, and in 1985 was the first Australian woman to be made an elite football club board member.

But times have changed.

“I don’t barrack for anyone in the entire AFL,” she says.

“If you can embrace the concept of the new entity, (that’s) great; there are many of us that can’t.”

In 1996, the AFL offered a “lifeline” to the cash-strapped Fitzroy Lions – a merger with the Brisbane Bears.  But the solution was a poisoned chalice to many Fitzroy fanatics, leading to the death of their club.

“You can’t transplant passion,” Craig Little says.  Little is President of the Fitzroy Reds, a former university club aligned with the Fitzroy Football Club, which still boasts 1200 paid members.

His bold plan to re-brand the Reds as the Fitzroy Football Club was presented to the Red’s hierarchy last week and looks set to succeed.

Little says the re-branding would pay respect to Fitzroy heritage and bring the community into the fold.  It would also bequeath the emotional punch the Fitzroy brand still possesses to his club.

Little wants to reclaim community football and make Fitzroy a grass-roots club that unites the community, like suburb-based footy clubs used to do and country football still does.

“It’s like Eddie McGuire said, ‘Collingwood’s more than a suburb’.  Well, we’re very much a suburb.”

But not everyone’s a fan of the idea.

Writer, philosopher and artist Barry Dickins famously declared he’d never support another team when his beloved Fitzroy was lost.  And for him there’s no going back; Fitzroy is a long-departed flame whose memory he cherishes, but will never return to his embrace.

“They don’t exist, they were taken out of existence in 1996, and the past has to have some fort of fidelity,” he says.  “It’s like falling in love with someone and breaking up, and then going out with them again.  They’re not the same person you loved.  That person is gone.”

The club that got away will always provoke an emotional response.  Brownlow medallist Bernie “Superboot” Quinlan, now 56, has a lot of ties to Fitzroy.

“My father played here, in the seconds,” he says.  “I’ve got a photo of him in the grandstands.”

Quinlan’s a quiet supporter of the plan to resurrect the club’s name.  It’s clear he feels the AFL lost something when the merger took place.  He just smiles when asked who he barracks for now.  “You heard what Elaine said,” he says.

Findlay doesn’t criticise the Brisbane Lions, but she believes football’s gift to communities is its power to unite people of all backgrounds as players and supporters.  And she thinks a rejuvenated Fitzroy Football Club could do that for the inner north.

“It’s a vision of reconnecting to the district where it all started – and if we can assist in bringing all groups of those that believe in football together, then it can only be for the good.”