Palman Qui Meruit Ferat
Old Fitzroy faithful deserve respect
VICTORIAN Supreme Court Associate Justice Nemeer Mukhtar is a good judge.
Mukhtar this week proved himself as capable as anyone of diagnosing an acute case of foot-in-mouth disease.
Presiding over the Brisbane Lions versus Fitzroy stoush, he could not resist auditioning for his own special comments gig.
Mukhtar looked at Rodney Garratt, QC, the Brisbane Lions' barrister, and delivered a perfectly worded warning.
"You will upset some people talking like that," he said.
"I think there is still some bleeding."
In fighting for the right to change the traditional Fitzroy logo to a widely ridiculed "Paddle Pop Lion" lookalike, Garratt took a pot-shot at the once-great club gobbled up in a 1996 merger.
Garratt described Fitzroy as a club with a "shrinking if not vanishing supporter base" that sought to interfere in the business of a current AFL club.
Whack.
"(A club that is) historical on one side that is asking to control the actions of an ongoing organisation, the Brisbane Lions, and is doing so in a way which threatens to be the cause of significant loss," Garratt said.
In other words: The Lions are a club going forward, Fitzroy is a club that has gone under.
If the 1200 paid up and passionate Fitzroy members still flying the flag weren't bleeding before those comments, they are now.
This is supposed to be a happily merged club, but here we have a QC sending a message that Fitzroy is nothing but a pesky ghost proving difficult to shake.
Yet you can bet Fitzroy will be very much alive the next time the Brisbane Lions have a chance to pick up a Royboy father-son.
Remember, without Fitzroy, the Lions would be without their skipper, Jonathan Brown taken as a father-son pick.
If the Brisbane Lions are comfortable for its legal counsel to paint Fitzroy as a nothing but an interfering, increasingly irrelevant, relic from the past, Lions should pass on Paul Roos's sons Dylan and Tyler if they turn out to be guns.
The Fitzroy faithful are adamant the Brisbane Lions are bound to use the logo, in use when the merger happened in 1996, "in perpetuity".
They are furious a new stylised logo was thrust on them late last year.
The Lions argue they are moving with the times (and the new design is hardly a massive shift), but this is a matter of principle.
The old Fitzroy deserves more respect.
Why not just stick with the old Lion as a tribute to the past?
And it's not the only reason Fitzroy fans have had reason to be furious.
This year, the Brisbane Lions play one of the first 10 games in Melbourne. The AFL fixture people should have done better. One Melbourne visit before June 5 is a joke.
Now, the Lions via their QC, had delivered another slap in the face.
Perhaps it was justice that Marc Murphy didn't agree to go to the Lions as a father-son pick, a la Brown, and remained in Melbourne to play with Carlton.
In this environment it wouldn't seem right to see Johnny Murphy's son running around up north.
Mark Stevens Herald Sun March 07, 2010
