A hundred years ago Fitzroy won their 7^th VFL premiership. They were the kings of a competition that was 26 years old. Collingwood and Carlton had five flags, Essendon four, Richmond and South Melbourne two and Melbourne one. And they did it the tough way, finishing third on the home-and-away ladder and playing every week of the finals. 

While the 2022 Brisbane Lions have missed the opportunity to repeat the fairytale success story this year it is a moment that will forever sit warmly in the hearts of Lions fans.

It had been a crazy time for the then VFL competition. Launched in 1897 with eight teams – Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, South Melbourne and St.Kilda – it increased to 10 teams in 1908 with the addition of Richmond and University.

In 1915 University withdrew, taking it back to nine teams, before it fell to four teams – Carlton, Collingwood, Fitzroy and Richmond - at the height of World War Two in 1916. Astonishingly, that was the year Fitzroy collected the wooden-spoon and the premiership in the same season. Geelong and South Melbourne returned in 1917, followed by Essendon in 1918 and Melbourne in 1919.

Fitzroy, premiers in 1898-99, 1904-05, 1913 and 1916, enjoyed one of their great moments in the 1922 grand final. But according to one especially learned Fitzroy follower who is better equipped than most to have an opinion, there were nine better.

Pete Carter, a Perth-based mathematics and statistics teacher and part-time football historian, is the author of Fitzroy’s Fabulous Century: The 100 Greatest Victories, 1897–1996, a book which lists from 1-100 the club’s best wins.

The book is the result of a life-time love affair with Fitzroy that began for Carter in 1965-66, when Kevin Murray was captain-coach of East Perth, the WAFL club which Carter had supported growing up on the WA wheat belt and where now he is the voluntary historian.

Carter, who had a stint at the Australian Bureau of Statistics and time as the football writer at the Canberra Times while living in the national capital in the 1980s and ‘90s, ranks Fitzroy’s 1922 grand final win 10^th on his list of favorite Fitzroy wins.

It was a season in which Fitzroy spent every week of the home-and-away season in the top four but only four weeks on top of the ladder - Rounds 11-12-13-14. Ironically, the only two teams they did not beat in the home-and-away season were the two sides they beat in the finals. After a home loss and an away draw to Essendon they beat them in the preliminary final, and after home and away losses to Collingwood they beat them in the semi-final and the grand final.

Fitzroy, known at the time as the Maroons, won the flag despite a massive disruption in Round 16 when they lost leading goal-kicker Bob Merrick to injury. Despite missing the last two rounds and the finals Merrick kicked 47 goals to finish second in League goal-kicking – equal with Melbourne’s Harry Harker and behind only Carlton’s Horrie Clover (56).

It was a season which saw the debut of future Fitzroy 100-gamers Norm Cockram and Tommy Corrigan, the retirement of 149-game champion and 1913 premiership star Chris Lethbridge after his second flag, and the retirement of Bert Taylor after he played his 50^th game in the grand final.

Percy Parratt, later named in the Fitzroy Team of the Century, collected his third premiership after being playing coach of the 1913 premiership side and a member of the 1916 premiership side. Jimmy Freake and Horrie Jenkin won their second premiership after Freake had played in the 1913 flag and Jenkin in the 1916 flag.

It was a year that also saw the last appearance in Fitzroy colors of Bert Lenne, a 1913-16 premiership defender and a member of the 1917 grand final side who was famously suspended for nine matches in 1915 for elbowing a Collingwood opponent. Lenne played only three times in 1922 in Rounds 1-2 and Round 16, and after he was not selected in the finals he quit the club and played two subsequent seasons with St.Kilda.

Here, exclusively for www.lions.com.au, Pete Carter recounts Fitzroy’s fabulous 1922 season.

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Since winning the 1916 VFL premiership with a last-to-first burst that would’ve done a Melbourne Cup winner proud, albeit in a “four-horse field”, Fitzroy’s form had been erratic. However, under the coaching of former South Melbourne premiership (1909 and 1918) ruckman Vic Belcher, the 1922 Roys again timed their run to perfection to win the ultimate prize. Belcher, in his first season at Brunswick Street, was the first “outsider” to coach the Maroons.

In addition to winning a seventh VFL flag to move two ahead of their arch-rivals Carlton and Collingwood, Fitzroy also created history by becoming the first VFL side to travel by train to Western Australia. It was an unorthodox but ultimately successful team-spirit-building exercise.

The nine-team competition had a week off after Round 13 and because the Roys also had a bye in Round 14, a 53-strong contingent headed west, with the trip taking four days and five different trains. Fitzroy played three games in eight days in Perth, defeating WAFL clubs West Perth and East Fremantle and losing to a WA state side, before being beaten by a combined Goldfields team in Kalgoorlie on the way home.

Having lost narrowly to Essendon before their interstate trip, the weary Maroons fell to Richmond and then Collingwood and were a mathematical chance of missing the finals. Solid but unspectacular wins over South Melbourne and Melbourne shored up third place on the ladder and a first-up finals meeting with the top-of-the-tree Magpies. This was in the era of the “challenge final”, before the Page–McIntyre finals system - the precursor of the modern finals set-up - was introduced.

Trailing by 12 points at half-time in a low-scoring game, Fitzroy put on a “Freake Show” in the third quarter to lead by 12. Full-forward Jimmy Freake kicked the only four goals of the term for a match haul of five. Though the Pies scored the only goal of the final quarter the Roys hung on to win 6.10 (46) to 5.12 (42).

A week earlier, Essendon had eliminated Carlton from the premiership race with a hard-fought 5.9 (39) to 4.10 (34) victory. The Dons then met the Roys in the preliminary final, played between the two semi-final winners. Helped by Fitzroy’s inaccuracy, including 1.8 in the third quarter, Essendon led narrowly at each change. However, the Maroons slammed on 5.2 to 0.3 in the final term en route to a 9.14 (68) to 6.9 (45) win. Though Freake booted two goals, it was the unlikely figure of Len Wigraft (three goals) who took the honours up forward.

There was a sense of great anticipation leading into the title decider against Collingwood, with the minor premier having the automatic right of challenge after losing to Fitzroy two weeks earlier. And the 50,064 people who attended the MCG on 14 October weren’t disappointed with the ensuing contest. In More Than a Century of Grand Finals, Jim Main wrote: “Those who saw the 1922 Grand Final rated it one of the greatest games played to that time, with brilliant skills and fearless attacks on the ball.”

As they had in the semi-final, the Maroons trailed the Magpies at half-time before unleashing another powerful third-quarter burst, kicking 6.4 to 3.2. Collingwood threatened in the last quarter but were dogged by inaccuracy, with Fitzroy prevailing 11.13 (79) to 9.14 (68). Freake’s four goals gave him 11 for the finals, while club stalwart Percy Parratt - who came out of retirement after goal sneak Bob Merrick’s late-season knee injury  - booted three. For skipper Chris Lethbridge, a premiership player in his first season (1913), winning another flag was the perfect way to bow out after 149 games.

The 1922 Roys were a very physical side. Indeed, many referred to them as “the Men” or “the Man’s Team”. The Argus’s 1954 magazine Footy and the Clubs That Made It said: “With burly players applying weight scientifically as a legalised weapon, it (Fitzroy) literally steamrollered its path to the 1922 flag.” Rugged defender Horrie Jenkin later said: “We wouldn’t go around a man. We’d sooner go through him.”

Facing elimination each game, Fitzroy had produced an extraordinary three weeks of football, with their strength and fitness enabling them to overcome half-time deficits in each match. An unusual feature of the Maroons’ 19-game season (13 wins, five losses, one draw) was that their biggest winning margin was only 27 points, against St Kilda at Brunswick Street. Their biggest loss was 32 points at Collingwood.

Outside the three finals, perhaps the Roys’ best victory came at home to Carlton. Five goals down in the third term, Fitzroy kicked nine of the last 11 majors to win by three goals.

Who knows just how beneficial the late-season WA trip was to the team’s eventual success. All connected with the 1922 Maroons have long since passed. However, the spirit of Fitzroy lives on through Brisbane, so let’s hope the gallant 2022 Lions can replicate the Royboys’ feats of 100 years earlier.

Pete Carter is the author of Fitzroy’s Fabulous Century: The 100 Greatest Victories, 1897–1996, which includes a detailed account of the 1922 VFL Grand Final. The book is available at www.fitzroypete.com.au.