A Tiger or A Lion?
After five seasons without their beloved Tiger identity, Hobart's financial members voted for incumbent president Phillip Baker to take over the top job after John Blake (1998–2002) resigned from his position at the end of that season.
A sizeable section of the club's membership, supporter base and players had felt that there was a strong conflict of interest within the SFL and in particular the League's General Manager Noel Morrison (who had close ties with the Kingborough Football Club) over the club's treatment and constant siding with Kingborough on the issue.
Members had also been unhappy for some time at the board's perceived failure to take a stand and make any reasonable attempt at regaining the club's identity and emplored with the new president to make every effort possible during 2003 to regain the former emblem and former playing strip.
Upon hearing the news that every effort would be made to fight the League and Kingborough over the denial of Hobart's true identity, membership almost doubled from the previous year.
However, there were rumblings within the club early in 2004 that moves were afoot to change the colours of the club and align itself with AFL clubs firstly St Kilda and later powerhouse Brisbane Lions.
Many supporters showed their disappointment and crowd attendances plummeted rapidly during the season. Late in the season a group of senior players and outgoing coach Michael McGregor were making statements in the press agitating for change, which threatened to split an already fractured club even further.
In a bloody coup which split the club down the middle – and to this day there is still some bitterness over the situation amongst older supporters – a meeting on 1 December 2004 saw the club elect to adopt a Brisbane Lions playing jumper and use the Lions logo in future. A large number of long-time supporters walked away in disgust and an extremely tense atmosphere existed between pro-Tiger and pro-Lions fans for several years after as the club's membership tally fell from 232 in 2003 to just 29 by 2008.
Read more about this topic: Hobart Forever Boys
Famous quotes containing the word tiger:
“The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of the snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races,—race living at the expense of race.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)