The news today is that as expected, Collingwood as the higher-ranked team get the right to wear home colours in Saturday’s AFL Grand Final (In line with the AFL’s policy on Grand Final strips since at least 2010), meantime, Brisbane as the lower-ranked team were simply told they had to wear white shorts, so they did have the option of wearing the Fitzroy-inspired red away guernsey, as they have done in Melbourne games for the last 15 years, most recently against the Magpies in Round 23 when Dev Robertson’s guernsey was torn and exposed his 8-pack to millions…

But the Lions have gone the simpler path of wearing the maroon home guernsey with white shorts, which was the combination for their first premiership as the Brisbane Lions in 2001.

Then in 2002 and 2003, the Lions wound up wearing their home colours against Collingwood in the Grand Final, because the AFL’s white shorts policy until the late 2000s could be best described as rubbery…. case in point, the Lions wore white shorts in Round 8 of 2002 against Collingwood:

Then this happened in the ’02 Grand Final, despite the fact Brisbane were the higher-ranked team:

Still, there’s no obvious colour clash in that photo.

Since the introduction of mandatory clash strips in the late 2000s, the Lions have sparsely worn the maroon guernsey with white shorts, save for occasions such as when they wore a 10th anniversary Threepeat guernsey against Essendon at Docklands in 2013 (Which the Lions won in a boilover), Sir Doug Nicholls Round in 2017 (also against Collingwood), and its most recent on-field appearance prior to Saturday came against Sydney (Who were wearing a white South Melbourne guernsey) in Cairns during Round 17 of 2020.

Which gives us an interesting fact – The Fitzroy Red, Blue & Gold colours will have still never appeared in a senior VFL/AFL Grand Final.

Fitzroy’s last Grand Final appearance (and win) was in 1944, when they were still wearing maroon & blue and nicknamed the Gorillas, they changed their nickname to the Lions in 1957, then eventually changed from maroon & blue to red, blue & gold in 1975 to mark the introduction of colour television in Australia.

The Lions wore the red, blue & gold right up until their final pre-merger season of 1996, in which time their best finish was a Preliminary Final in 1986, which turned out to be their last finals appearance.

Although, if you count the Ressies and Under 19s, then the combination did appear when Fitzroy won the Under 19s flag in 1982, and the Reserves premiership in 1989.

Sadly however, it will remain a romantic idea, because it is the BRISBANE Lions who will be playing on Saturday, not the Fitzroy Lions.