The Joy of Six: lost Australian sport teams

1) Brisbane Bears (VFL/AFL – 1987 to 1996)

By the 1980s most Victorian Football League sides were in deep financial trouble, but at least they’d had a century to work themselves to the brink of oblivion. In just three fiscally irresponsible seasons the Brisbane Bears found themselves a whopping $26m in the red. Even the $4m they paid to enter the competition was still owed to the bank, and with their loan guaranteed by the failed Qintex empire of feckless tycoon Christopher Skase, the league’s northern experiment was on the brink of collapse.

Brisbane had been lucky to get into the VFL in the first place. The 1986 vote to admit them and the West Coast Eagles was only won on the bare minimum vote of 8-4 courtesy of Fitzroy unwittingly creating their future partner by changing their vote at the last minute, but while even the clubs who had voted ‘no’ were happy to take a cut of the lucrative licence fee they were less generous in helping Brisbane build a squad.

The Bears chose eight experienced South Australians in the national draft, but were forced to fill the rest of their list with players unwanted by other clubs. Teams were allowed to offer anybody who had played at least one senior match or a reserves final, and not surprisingly everyone took advantage by attempting to offload the overpaid, over-the-hill or woefully inexperienced. Brisbane complained about Carlton offering them a player who had just retired.

Despite being used as a dumping ground Brisbane won 21 games across their first three seasons, but as Skase’s empire collapsed the penniless club soon spiraled towards the foot of the ladder. A strike by senior players ruled them out of the 1990 pre-season competition and the Bears wouldn’t win more than four games again until 1994.

In a rare outbreak of actual joy in this list Brisbane finally came good, though not under their original identity. By 1995 they’d shed almost every aspect of their original identity and finally moved from the Gold Coast to Queensland’s capital. They qualified for their first finals series, and went within one game of a grand final in 1996. That year they merged with Fitzroy, and after an initial dip in fortunes, the Brisbane Lions under Leigh Matthews emerged a few years later as three-time premiers and one of the great sides of the modern era.

2) South Dragons (NBL – 2006 to 2009)

Everyone dreams of finishing their career with a moment of triumph so stunning that they can exit with arms raised in triumph never to return. The 2009 NBL champions achieved their own version of the feat, retiring unconquered but not without five years (and counting) of looking back in anger.

South Dragons were founded in 2006 as the latest in the complicated lineage of “anybody but the Tigers” Melbourne basketball teams. During home games the Victoria Titans helpfully displayed a family tree explaining how it worked - between 1979 and 1998 the St Kilda Saints became the Westside Saints then the Southern Saints, who merged with the Eastside Spectres (previously the Nunawading Spectres) to form Eastside Melbourne Magic who merged with the ex-Coburg now North Melbourne Giants to become the Titans. Got it? Then to complicate matters they too went broke and reemerged as the Victoria Giants. The new Giants didn’t last long either, and after two seasons the Dragons bought their NBL licence.

Though they had a losing record in their first season South qualified for the playoffs courtesy of a generous system which saw eight of 12 sides in the league included, but when they collapsed to a 5-25 record in their second year it looked like another challenger to the Tigers was heading down the gurgler. However that dud season was the catalyst for one of the most stunning turnarounds in Australian sporting history, with the Dragons finishing first the next season and appropriately beating the Tigers in the grand final.

What should have become a great local rivalry was actually killed off by the Tigers. Both teams had agreed to sit out the 2010-2011 season in protest at a perceived lack of reform to the competition. The NBL was already lacking teams in Sydney or Brisbane and might have been forced to negotiate rather than lose both Melbourne sides but when the Tigers backflipped, South were left out in the cold.

The Dragons immediately disbanded their championship squad and went into a recess that would ultimately prove permanent. The local professional basketball scene was left to the Tigers (recently rebranded as Melbourne United), leaving their many detractors waiting patiently for a second Melbourne team to come along and reignite the rivalry.

3) Gold Coast United (A-League – 2009 to 2012)

There’s little that Clive Frederick Palmer has turned his hand to without success. From property to mining and winning control of the Senate, his breathtakingly shambolic attempt at football club ownership might be the only chapter skimmed over in his autobiography.

Before Palmer United there was Gold Coast United but despite Palmer tipping in $18m, the club became the latest to fall victim to a region which has (probably) killed more professional sporting teams per capita than anywhere else on Earth. Third place in their first season was encouraging but drama was never far away.

An opening home attendance of 7,526 was respectable enough, but by the time fellow expansion club North Queensland returned to Skilled Park a few weeks later the crows numbered just 2,616. Alarm bells had gone off in the lead-up to the match when Palmer announced he would cap attendances at 5,000 to save himself $100,000 a match in stadium rental fees and government transport levies. Under pressure Palmer was convinced to scrap the cap before the next home game, but crowds never recovered. Later that year only 4,109 turned out to see their inaugural finals appearance.

Next season attendances regularly dipped below 2,000, and though they were heading for the finals again just 5,088 combined turned up to see them play three home games in December 2010. With important players rapidly abandoning United they sank to the bottom of the league in their third year, and the walls began to close in on Palmer. In February 2012 he appointed 17-year-old Mitch Cooper as captain on his debut, sacked coach Miron Bleiberg for describing the appointment as “ceremonial” then publicly referred to football as a “hopeless game”. By this point all but the most hardcore fans had given up, and days after just 1,141 turned up for a match.

When Palmer escalated his dispute with the FFA by sending players out with the shirt sponsor ‘Freedom of Speech’ the A-League finally had enough and booted him out. The rudderless United stumbled to the end of the season and died shortly after, while Palmer plotted to take revenge by forming a rival governing body for football in Australia. He soon lost interest in running the game and turned to running the country instead – he seems to be having much more fun doing that.

4) Adelaide Giants (ABL - 1989 to 1999)

For a brief moment during the 1990s a weekly highlights package on Channel 10 prompted baseball to become something more than a minority concern in Australia. With none-more-90s aspects to the coverage (such as the title sequence which looked like it had been taken from a failed American sitcom), Timezone video game arcade ads on the fence and a young Warren Smith’s gravity defying haircut we thrilled to the performances of ritzy franchises like the Melbourne Monarchs, Daikyo Dolphins and Sydney Wave for a while before normal service resumed.

Though we’re light on video proof of the existence of the Giants, ABL records show they were the league leaders in bland stability. In a competition where teams came and went on a yearly basis Adelaide were just one of three to complete the full 10 seasons under their original name, although they never played in a championship game. What we know is that their logo was a decidedly un-giant like thunderbolt and that they were affiliated with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were seemingly unconcerned (or unaware) that Adelaide bore the same nickname as their most hated rival.

The Giants’ best chance at South Australia’s first national baseball triumph since the 1980 Claxton Shield came in the league’s final year. They dominated the regular season but collapsed in the playoffs, and along with the rest of the league were unceremoniously turfed out when (in an deal even Palmer might have said “whoa, hold up” to) Aussie major leaguer Dave Nilsson paid $5m to acquire the rights to the struggling competition. Nilsson’s new International Baseball League found little public interest and collapsed after two seasons.

The ABL was rebooted for the 2008-09 season, and that year fans in the City of Churches finally got within striking distance of glory for the first time in nearly 30 years courtesy of the Adelaide Bite qualifying for the league’s championship game. Sadly for the long suffering local baseball community they lost and haven’t enjoyed a winning season since.

5) Christchurch Sirens (WNBL – 2007 to 2008) …

… who are not strictly ‘Australian’, but along with the Auckland (Football) Kingz, New Zealand Knights and Singapore Slingers represent failed attempts by sports administrators to lend a hand to our neighbours by including their sides in local competitions.

In the case of the three-time NBL champion New Zealand Breakers the idea might have worked too well, but history has shown sporting cultural exchange is more likely to end with administrators getting involved than in championship glory. Some exchanges have been easier to broker than others, with the A-League’s Wellington Phoenix forced to sidestep Fifa rules by playing as an Australian team based in New Zealand in a similar fashion to tennis players having a postal address in the Bahamas for ‘tax purposes’.

The Women’s National Basketball League had no such issues when they welcomed the Christchurch Sirens for the 2007-2008 season, and in addition to the stunningly named American import Ashley Awkward (finalist in a college basketball ‘name of the year’ competition alongside Genesis Lightbourne and Lady Comfort) the new side were given an immediate leg-up by the inclusion of many of New Zealand’s Tall Ferns women’s national team.

They went 9-3 at home in their first year but missed the finals courtesy of 12 straight losses in Australia and finished eighth of 10 teams. It was a competitive start but the Sirens were destined to join not-very-fondly remembered teams such as the Hunter Mariners and Collingwood Warriors in playing a single season in an Australian national league then disappearing.

The absurdity of a team from New Zealand playing in a competition contractually obligated to be referred to as the Australian Defence Force Women’s National Basketball League at all times came to an end in 2008 when a major sponsor withdrew. In a league where sides were so reliant on sponsorship dollars that their fellow 2007 expansion club was officially called the Jimmy Possum Bendigo Spirit in tribute to a local homewares merchant, it was a fatal blow which left the club unable to continue in Christchurch.

There was a suggestion that the club would be relocated to Wellington, but Basketball Australia was having none of it and the Sirens became the latest in a Gold Coast-esque line of Trans-Tasman sporting fatalities.

6) Newtown Jets (NSWRL - 1908 to 1983)

To avoid a flood of complaints from furious league loyalists it should be noted that the Jets are in fact alive and doing very well in the second-tier New South Wales Cup. Which is great news, but it’s been more than 30 years since the foundation NSWRL club appeared in the big time.

The Bluebags managed three premierships before 1943, but by the 1960s they were generally found nearer the bottom of the ladder than the top and hit rock-bottom with a wooden spoon hat-trick between 1976 and 1978.

Desperate for any advantage which might lift them off the bottom of the ladder the Jets launched the most ambitious recruiting move in the game’s history in 1977 by signing fringe NFL player Manfred Moore. After Moore scored the club’s first try of the season it seemed like a stroke of genius, but four games later the demands of the brutal sport became too much and he decided to return to the US. Newtown would lose 20 in a row after Moore’s debut, but his brief stint is so fondly remembered that for $35 the Jets will sell you a t-shirt featuring him hurling a football over the Henson Park grandstand. Just because.

In 1981 Newtown briefly returned to prominence when they reached their first grand final since 1955 but were defeated, and with the competition expanding outside Sydney the cash-strapped club found themselves in the league’s crosshairs after the 1983 season. They were unceremoniously booted out of the league along with Western Suburbs, but unlike the Magpies didn’t have the resources to scrap their way back in via the courts. As a final indignity when they were officially excluded and a proposed move to Campbelltown collapsed, Wests moved into the area instead.

The Jets live on, representing the many rugby league sides to have come and gone since 1908 – and famous teams from all codes who have reluctantly ended up in the lower leagues. From Fitzroy playing in Melbourne’s amateur Australian rules competition, to the NSL clubs swept back to the state leagues in the ethnic cleansing frenzy of the A-League, these sides remain alive ‘off-Broadway’ for the benefit of both those who remember the good times, and anybody looking for an alternative to the ruthless corporate environment of today’s modern sporting competition.

Just pray that your team never join them.