It is going on 26 years since the Brisbane Lions were formed via the merger of the Brisbane Bears and Fitzroy. A Club built on change that has seen many pivotal moments since. This year the Brisbane Lions and youi are teaming up for the ‘Moments Of Change’ series where each week they’ll look back at some of the defining moments that shaped them as the Club they are today.

Think of the 2001-02-03 golden era of the Brisbane Lions and you immediately go straight to the grand finals. Michael Voss’ defining late goal and Shaun Hart’s best afield fairytale in 2001. Jason Akermanis’ late winner in the wet in 2002. And Simon Black’s sheer mastery alongside Nigel Lappin’s extraordinary bravery in 2003.

It will always be the way, but such unforgettable and all-defining highlights are only ever the result a series of key moments of change and a mountain of hard work in the years before.

The unconquerable Lions side was being put together from right back in the Robert Walls’ era of the early 1990s, but two key acquisitions in the trade/draft period of 2000, hardly headline-grabbers at the time, were crucial to the success that followed.

First, a trade which secured a 23-year-old 61-game fullback with a 30% win ratio in a side that had just finished second last. And then an aggressive and astute draft punt on a 27-year-old 141-game premiership player just sacked by his third club.

Mal Michael and Martin Pike were two of the final pieces in the Brisbane premiership puzzle. Critically important in the champion team that would stun the football world, overcoming the burdens of fortnightly travel to become arguably the best team of all-time.

Both are fantastic stories that will always warm the hearts of Lions fans.

Michael, born in Papua New Guinea and raised at Kenmore in Brisbane, was a powerhouse fullback who for as long as he could remember dreamed of playing AFL football for Brisbane.

Twice he’d been invited to do summer training with the Bears but it didn’t work out. Collingwood swooped. He was the first AFL rookie to play senior football and had shown plenty of potential under Tony Shaw and then Mick Malthouse but was considered expendable by the hierarchy at Victoria Park. Not unwanted but not off-limits either.

It was never going to be an easy trade until Jarrod Molloy, one of two of the ‘Chosen Eight’ of the Fitzroy merger still wearing the old Lions jumper of the new Lions in 2000, intervened. He’d played 61 games in four years in Brisbane – precisely the same number as Michael at Collingwood – but at the end of season 2000, still with a year to run on his contract, Molloy decided he wanted to go home.

Michael had holidayed in Thailand at the end of season 2000. He’d had been a tremendous time but was frustrated because nowhere could he find an Australian newspaper with news of the football “meat market”. Only a phone call from his manager Ron Joseph alerted him to the fact that something was on. That a move to Brisbane was on the cards.

He returned home on the Monday morning to find a note from Joseph under his door. He was to meet with Leigh Matthews at midday. An hour later he’d made up his mind. He was all in. He was returning home. All that had to be done was the trade.

Collingwood wanted a direct swap. A contracted Molloy for an out-of-contract Michael. But Brisbane, with the upper hand because of the contract situation, played hard ball. Perhaps they remembered how 12 months earlier they’d lost Shane O’Bree to Collingwood for nothing when the out-of-contract top 10 draftee was lured to Victoria Park. They wanted a second-round draft pick, too. They got it. Pick No.22 in the 2000 draft and Michael for Molloy and pick #44.

It was a dream for Michael, who had graduated to senior football at Morningside before joining Collingwood. So much so that when asked in his official 2000 player profile for the AFL website what posters he’d had on his bedroom wall as a youngster, he answered the Beatles, the Bears and the Wise Guys. And that as a Collingwood player.

He’d represented Queensland in water polo and basketball as a junior, and Australian football, playing alongside Jason Akermanis in the 1994 Teal Cup side coached by ex-Geelong and Collingwood player Mike Woolnough.

Michael did the entire 1994-95 pre-season with the Bears alongside 1994 zone selection Akermanis and an aspiring local youngster named Clint Bizzell, who would go on to play 163 games with Geelong and Melbourne after being overlooked by the Bears in the 1994 draft.

He began the 1995-96 pre-season with the Bears but before Christmas he was poached by Collingwood, where his great grandfather Robert Michael had played one AFL game in 1906. A spot on the Magpies’ rookie list, a luxury the Bears did not have, was enough to get him over the line.

Five years on, when he returned ‘home’, Michael told of his initial heartbreak. “I was really disappointed not to get a chance in Brisbane – that’s all I ever wanted to do. I really enjoyed the company of the people at the club and the way the club was run and I thought I’d done everything I could to get drafted. But the Collingwood offer was too good to refuse,” he recalled.

Although refuse it he nearly did. Shortly before the start of the ’97 season he had arranged to return to Morningside when, as he put it bluntly, he’d run out of money. “I couldn’t live any more,” he explained. But the Magpies didn’t want him to go. They sent Nathan Buckley around to convince him to stay. And with the help of a few well-chosen words from a close friend he decided to give it another go. Within months he’d become the first PNG-born AFL player, and the first player to step directly from a rookie list into elite football.

It was the beginning of a mixed time. Michael played 13 games in his debut season in 1997, was judged Collingwood’s “Best First-Year Player”, finished eighth in the B&F and was nominated for the AFL Rising Star Award. In ’98 he missed five games mid-season with stress fractures in his back but was 4^th in the B&F. And despite four months on the sideline over the 1998-99 summer with further stress fractures he was 10^th in the B&F in ’99. In 2000 he missed the first seven games with a bad ankle, played the next 15 games and finished 18^th in the B&F. Not that he bothered to attend the B&F dinner. By then he’d decided to move on. The question was ‘where?’.

The answer came via the Molloy trade and Michael was unashamedly open about the reasons why. “I want to play in the finals and I’ve got no doubt the Lions can do that,” he said at the time. “The young nucleus of the side is terrific and I’m looking forward to being part of it. There were lots of things that made the decision for me, and in the end it really made itself because there were so many pointers towards Brisbane. It was the best package. I know it probably sounds selfish, but I’m 23 and I want to experience finals footy.”

Pike was a different story. Originally from Glenelg in the SANFL, he was drafted by Melbourne with pick #9 in 1992 after Brisbane had taken Nathan Chapman at #2 and Justin Leppitsch at #4. He played 24 games in 1993-94 but was traded to Fitzroy for Marcus Seecamp primarily for off-field reasons.

He played 14 games in 1995 and in ’96 played every game to win what turned out to be the last Fitzroy B&F. The last Percy Mitchell Medal. But he was unwanted by Brisbane in the merger that followed.

North Melbourne, effectively out-pointed by Brisbane in the merger deal, drafted Pike at #42 in the 1996 draft. He played 81 games from 1997-2000, including 11 finals, a 1998 grand final loss to Adelaide and a 1999 premiership win over Carlton. But he was shown the door by Denis Pagan after a 50-point loss to Melbourne in the 2000 preliminary final.

What next? Leigh Matthews, always keen to pursue talent at other clubs, was a Pike fan. And on Friday night, 26 October, three days before the 2000 draft he organised for Pike to meet with him and Lions football boss Graeme Allan.

Pike put on his only suit and, pulling at the tie he rarely wore, sweating in a jacket he wore even less, he sat in the foyer of the Carlton Crest Hotel on Queens Road in Melbourne. And he sat, and he sat. For nearly an hour, not realising he was at the wrong hotel. It was the AFL hotel for interstate teams, yes, but the Lions stayed around the corner at the Park View on St.Kilda Road.

When finally they found each other Matthews and Allan were wearing shorts and a t-shirt but the coach liked what he saw. “The thing that really impressed me was that he had a collar and tie on,” he said later. “You could see this was not a man who enjoyed wearing a collar and tie. He was sweating. He wanted to be given another chance and we just thought putting him into a new environment he was a good choice. At 33 in the draft you can get a youngster or an experienced player and I drove the fact “let’s get an experienced player”.”

Aware of Pike’s sometimes colorful off-field reputation, Matthews had been given the go-ahead by his senior players to draft the Kangaroos cast-off. He’d asked the specific question and been given a specific answer. Yes, we want him, said the core group. Yes, we think he’d be good value. But there was a proviso. He had to operate under the same strict code of conduct as everyone else. He did. And he was incredible value as a true utility player.

The Lions drafted Pike at #33 in the 2000 draft after picking up South Fremantle’s Ash McGrath at #13 and East Fremantle’s Richard Hadley at #22 with the extra pick they got from Collingwood. They claimed Zillmere ruckman Jamie Charman at #29 as a Queensland zone selection after the AFL’s late decision to rule that Nick Riewoldt at Southport lived outside the 75km radius that had originally been 150km. And in the rookie draft they gave a chance to Kilcoy turned Zillmere youngster Robert Copeland.

In one draft they added to their playing stocks six players who together would win 12 flags. And while McGrath, Hadley, Charman and Copeland might be considered ‘normal recruiting practice’ Michael and Pike were specific recruiting targets.

They made their Brisbane debut together in Round 1 2001 and over the grand final years of 2001-02-03-04 each played 97 of a possible 101 games in that time.

There was even an extra link to the Michael trade which would serve Brisbane well down the track. Pick #44 in 2000, traded from Brisbane to Collingwood, was on-traded by Collingwood to Geelong for Carl Steinfort. It became Josh Hunt, a 212-game defender and 2007-11 Geelong premiership player who spent six years in a key role running the Lions Academy before finishing up last year. He’s now selling real estate on the Gold Coast.

Thanks to our friends at youi for helping bring this series to life.