Amid the numerous parts that go together to make up a football club, the List Management division is as important as any.

Some of the great stories in football history are about recruits. Or imports if you prefer. Players who for whatever reason move from one club to another.

It can be injury or opportunity that prompts a player to seek a move. Or personalities and special circumstances. And from a club perspective, it's wants and needs. Or in the modern game, it can be salary cap pressures.

Very few moves are simple, and invariably there are multiple factors at play for the recruiting stars to align. But there is no denying the fact that the Lions, armed with one of the best medical and high-performance teams in the competition, has become something of a figurehead for one of the code’s new buzz phrases … a destination club.

This is confirmed by the fact that the 2021 playing group has 10 players who started their AFL careers at opposition clubs.

Lachie Neale wanted a change of turf, Lincoln McCarthy, Marcus Adams, Grant Birchall, Joe Daniher and Nakia Cockatoo needed a fresh start due to injury woes, and Charlie Cameron wanted to come ‘home’.

Birchall also had seen close mate Luke Hodge make a screaming success out of a twilight stint interstate in which he added 41 games to an already stellar career and chose to do likewise.

Mitch Robinson was a free agent on the scrapheap who just wanted another chance and Jarryd Lyons was a curious and complex mix of all sorts of things.

Cam Ellis-Yolmen, like Cameron, was well known to ex-Adelaide football boss turned Lions equivalent David Noble - a free agent taken to bolster the big-bodied midfield division.

And Callum AhChee, who had also had his share of injury woes, has family links to Queensland – his partner Laura is a local girl.

The data that shows why the medical and high-performance staff are so highly regarded is irrefutable.

After 29 games in eight years at Geelong, McCarthy has missed just two games in three years as a Lion. Birchall has missed four games in two years after playing eight games in 2017-18-19 at Hawthorn. And Daniher has played 19 games without a miss this year after 11 games in 2018-19-20.

Adams had strung 14 games in a row this year to prove his worth until a fresh setback in Round 17, and Cockatoo, one game into his Lions career and still a work in progress, had played only 34 games in six years.

Amid the complicated and sometimes delicate history of the Brisbane Lions, there was another factor at play 25 years ago. The merger between the Brisbane Bears and Fitzroy which provided a pathway never seen before and unlikely to been seen again.

And, at least statistically, it was the catalyst for the capture of the player who might be branded the club’s best-value ‘import’.

One in particular on the post-move games list at 186 is the player who symbolises the heart and spirit of the merger, Alastair Lynch. He was a 120-game Fitzroy star before moving north at the end of 1993.

And of course, Roger Merrett. Moving to Queensland in 1988 after 149 games at Essendon, he gave the Bears genuine market creditability in their second season and played a record 164 games in Maroon, Blue and Gold.

This duo heads a much-decorated group of 13 players who have topped 100 games in Brisbane colors after beginning their AFL career elsewhere. They are:-

Lyons (62), McCarthy (60) and Neale (56) are more than halfway to joining this exclusive club.

There have been 51 ‘imports’ to the Gabba post-merger and 62 other players who debuted in Brisbane before playing elsewhere – including 17 current players.

FITZROY IMPORTS

Among 110 Fitzroy 100-gamers in the club’s 100 years in the AFL only six began their career at another club. And of these only Team of the Century key forward Bernie Quinlan had played more than 18 games elsewhere before joining the Lions. Quinlan was a 177-game star at Footscray from 1969-77 before joining Fitzroy in 1978 to play 189 games and kick 76 goals from 1978-86 to win a place in the club’s Team of the Century and inclusion in the AFL Hall of Fame.

The other five 100-game ‘imports’ each had a special story that was part of the Fitzroy history.

Jack Moriarty, Fitzroy’s all-time leading goal-kicker with 626 goals in 157 games from 1924-33, only joined the club after a controversial end to his 13-game season at Essendon in 1922. The son of Geoff Moriarty, a dual Fitzroy premiership player and the club’s first coach, made his way to Fitzroy after he was dropped for Essendon’s 1922 preliminary final side. His replacement Greg Stockdale, normally a half back flanker, kicked five of Fitzroy’s six goals in the grand final qualified and followed up with a League record 68 goals in 1923 as Moriarty played in the Reserves. But after he switched to Fitzroy in 1924 Moriarty became a regular in the Victorian State side. He kicked 7-7-7 in his first three games for Fitzroy on his way to a League record 82 goals in his first season, and topped the Fitzroy goal-kicking every year from 1924-33, except 1930, when he played only eight games. When he retired he was third on the all-time League goal-kicking list and 88 years later he is still 27^th on the list.

Maurie Hearn played 136 games with Fitzroy from 1934-44, captaining the club in 1942 and finishing his career as a member of the 1944 premiership side. But only after he played eight games with then League powerhouse South Melbourne in 1932-34 before a mid-season switch to Fitzroy. He was the grandfather of four-time Australian Olympic basketballer Larry Sengstock.

Clen Denning, a member of Fitzroy’s last premiership side in 1944 and the oldest living Fitzroy player until his death at 98 in 2009, played 159 games for Fitzroy from 1938-47 after 18 games with Carlton from 1935-37. He has a unique place in football history, too, as the only player to kick six goals with his first six kicks in his debut with Carlton in 1935.

Charlie Norris was a 1913-16 premiership player with Fitzroy during a 106-game career with the club from 1911-18 but only after two years, 18 games and a premiership at Collingwood and a mid-season change of clubs. Later an AFL field umpire, he still holds the record as the oldest AFL debutant to play 100 games, having played his first game 21 days short of his 35^th birthday in 1910. His great grandson Will Hoskin-Elliott plays with Collingwood.

Doug Searl was a 131-game Fitzroy player from 1968-76, topping the club goal-kicking in 1969 with 68. It was the most by a Fitzroy player since Jack Moriarty in 1933 and saw him fourth in the League behind the legendary Doug Wade, Peter Hudson and Peter McKenna. But only 12 games with Collingwood from 1966-68. In his seventh game he was a member of the 1966 Collingwood grand final side that lost by a point to St.Kilda to give the Saints their only premiership.