Whoever wins this season’s flag and individual prizes will have had to overcome obstacles singular to a most peculiar year
Among music journalists, pub quiz enthusiasts and other friendless pedants, there is a phrase for the hoary fact which everybody knows, but which is nevertheless occasionally floated as a dazzling revelation by some gormless neophyte. The phrase is ‘Frank Beard’, in honour of ZZ Top’s drummer, the only member of the trio who chooses to go bare-chinned, very ironic, do you see, etcetera.
Australian football’s Frank Beard is Fitzroy’s 1916 season. The then VFL was reduced to four teams by World War I, so everybody made the final four, however terrible they were. Fitzroy were indeed terrible, and duly finished a truncated season’s twelve home-and-away rounds a long last, with just two wins and a draw, and all of those in the first three weeks. The Maroons then tapped a hitherto concealed reservoir of form in time for the finals, which they cruised inexplicably through to become premiers and wooden spooners in the same year.
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