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.

In 1996, the 113-year-old Fitzroy Football Club played its final game in the AFL. Financial pressures brought about by the steady professionalisation of the AFL respected neither the worth of the club's history nor the passion of its fans. Out of time and money, on 4 July 1996 Fitzroy was forced into a merger with the Brisbane Bears - creating the League's first, and thus far only, merged club. MERGER tells the story of that fateful year, from boardroom drama and intrigue to the wind and mud of the Whitten Oval, capturing the profound tragedy of Fitzroy's doomed plight. 'The demise of Fitzroy is a deep wound rather than a scar. A tear in the fabric of the game that will never truly repair.' - from the Foreword by Gerard Whateley

Article about Fitzroy Football Club.

Winner, Ned Kelly Award, Best Crime Novel, 2000 It takes a lot to rattle Jack Irish but, as Melbourne descends into a cold, wet winter, his mood is on the same trajectory. The woman in Jack's life has reconnected with an old flame. He has gambled and lost massively and seen a champion horse put down. It's not surprising that Jack's mind is not fully on the job he's being paid to do: find Robbie Colburne, occasional barman. But when Jack does get serious, he finds the freelance drink-dispenser is of great interest to some powerful people, people with very bad habits and a distinct lack of respect for the criminal justice system...Any lapse in concentration could prove fatal. Peter Temple is the author of nine novels, including four books in the Jack Irish series. He has won the Ned Kelly Award for Crime Fiction five times, and his widely acclaimed novels have been published in over twenty countries. The Broken Shore won the UK's prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger for the best crime novel of 2007 and Truth won the 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the first time a crime writer has won an award of this calibre anywhere in the world. Temple's first two novels Bad Debts and Black Tide have been made into films with Guy Pearce starring as Jack Irish. They screened on the ABC in August, 2012. 'Another world-class crime novel from Peter Temple.' Canberra Times 'Temple writes...with enough insight and passion to make the reader ask exactly where the boundary lies between genre fiction and serious literary fiction.' Sydney Morning Herald 'Temple is as dark and mean, as cool and as mesmerising, as any James Ellroy or Elmore Leonard with whom you might kill the small or sad hours.' Peter Craven, Age 'Temple's work is spare, deeply ironic; his wit, like the local beer, as cold as a dental anaesthetic.' Graeme Blundell, Australian 'It's clever, funny, exciting and exceedingly well written. The author weaves multi layers of plot, life, characters and emotions into an exceedingly satisfying narrative that grips from first to last page. If you haven't yet discovered Temple, track down his books. He's premier class.' Daily Examiner UK