The Fitzroy Football Club, nicknamed the Lions or the Roys, is an Australian rules football club formed in 1883 to represent the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Victoria and was a foundation member club of the Victorian Football League (now the Australian Football League) on its inception in 1897. The club experienced some early success in the league and was the first club to win a VFL Grand Final. It also achieved a total of eight VFL premierships between 1898 and 1944, and more recently three VAFA promotions in 2009 (-D Division), 2012 (-C Division) and 2018 (-C Division premiers).
The club ran into financial difficulties in the 1980s after decades of poor on-field performance and was forced to merge its AFL playing operations with the Brisbane Bears at the end of the 1996 season to form the Brisbane Lions.
Despite this, the club survived in its own right and the Fitzroy Football Club Ltd came out of administration in late 1998. For a brief time it experimented in partnerships with other semi professional and amateur clubs before incorporating the Fitzroy Reds (formerly University Reds) to play in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.
Fitzroy largely resumed its original VFL-AFL identity through its continued use of their 1975–1996 VFL-AFL jumper, their theme song and their 1884–1966 home ground at the Brunswick Street Oval. Fitzroy began in the D1 section of the VAFA in 2009, and since then the club has achieved multiple promotions and the 2018 premiership to be playing in the Premier B division as of the 2019 season. It is also notable for being one of only three clubs (along with University and Hawthorn) to have played in the VFA, VFL/AFL and VAFA competitions of Australian rules football.
In 2015 Fitzroy fielded its first women's team under the name of Fitzroy-ACU in partnership with the Australian Catholic University. In 2016, Fitzroy-ACU fielded two women's teams in the Victorian Women's Football League VWFL. From 2017, all Fitzroy teams play in the VAFA with the women playing in the VAFA's inaugural women's competition.
See also[]
- Brisbane Lions – for the merged club of Brisbane Lions Football Club with Brisbane Football Club
- Fitzroy Bulldogs – for the proposed merger with the Footscray Football Club
- Fitzroy FC honour roll – for coaches, captains, leading goalkickers and team position.
- List of Fitzroy Football Club coaches
- List of Fitzroy Football Club players
- North Fitzroy Kangaroos – for the proposed merger with the North Melbourne Football Club
- Proposed VFL/AFL clubs – for all of the proposed mergers for Fitzroy