Russell Holmesby

RTG: Prolific football author Holmesby takes a look at why the Fitzroy football club, a foundation member of the VFL did not survive beyond 1996. This is a long overdue look at why this much loved club did not survive long once the VFL morphed into the national AFL competition: PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION. 'The Death of Fitzroy Football Club is an oral history, outlining the reasons why Fitzroy FC, one of the founding clubs of the VFL in 1896, lost its way and eventually was merged with the Brisbane Bears. The book covers the spread of years from the seventies, through a period when the club was strong on the field in the early eighties, to the club’s death, at the end of the 1996 season. Fitzroy FC never had a chance when the VFL moved into the professional era. Despite its heritage, despite some of its champion players and coaches, it never had the financial wherewithal to survive. The beginning of the end can be traced to the seventies, when finances became tight, and the club’s best players had to be traded for cash'. The author has curated contemporaneous interviews from Inside Football magazine and other publications, together with interviews with those intimately involved in the club’s final days, including the AFL’s CEO, Ross Oakley, who oversaw the club’s final merge with the Brisbane Bears. The book describes the emotional fallout that saw families split, and supporters discarding their relationship with the AFL game.… (more)

The first edition of “The Encyclopaedia of AFL Footballers” was published in the time before the internet, so it was the essential reference guide as to who had played a senior game in the VFL/AFL. Indeed, I once inadvertently caused a rift between one of my university friends and his father when I showed him that his father, who had claimed that he had played three senior games for Hawthorn, was absent from the Encyclopaedia. I hope they have patched their relationship up by now.

Now that the internet allows us immediate access to a player’s stats and more, “The Encyclopaedia of AFL Footballers” is not so indispensable but still worth a leaf through, marvelling at the time it took Holmesby and Main to initially gather the names and stats of all VFL/AFL players.… (more)

An invaluable record of every VFL/AFL player since the inception of the league in 1897. Each entry contains a brief summary of the player's career, including the number of games played for all clubs, goals scored and list of major achievements and awards. Most players with more than a handful of games contain a brief written record of their career, while more prominent, infamous, or colourful players receive longer entries. Recent editions have given larger entries for current and more famous players. More recognition has also been given to players who played a handful of VFL/AFL games but were particularly prominent in other states, such as Western Australian great Jack Sheedy. First published in 1992.… (more)