when did the brisbane bears merged with fitzroy
Brisbane Bears However, the club was still struggling off-field. One of the Bears' biggest problems was its lack of support (both on and off the field) in Melbourne, the location of most of its away matches. In mid-1996, the struggling Fitzroy Football Club collapsed due to financial pressures and was seeking to merge its assets with another club. When a merger with North Melbourne in forming the North Fitzroy Kangaroos failed to win the support of the other AFL clubs, a deal for a merger was done between Fitzroy and the Bears. The new team was known as the Brisbane Lions, based at the Gabba, with Northey as the coach of the merged club. As such, the history of the Brisbane Bears as an individual entity ended after the 1996 season, with ten seasons of competition and the third-place finish in 1996 as its best performance. The Bears last match as a separate entity was a preliminary final on Saturday 21 September 1996 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (where the Bears played their first VFL/AFL game). It was against North Melbourne, their first and last ever opponents, the Bears lost by 38 points to North who would go on to win the premiership that year.When the team came off the MCG, the Bears were finished after a short and troubled existence.