Brisbane Roar’s 3-2 win over Perth Glory should come as a relief to coach John Aloisi, as the club looks to turn the corner in what has been a difficult campaign.

The win over the equally embattled Glory wasn’t exactly vintage football, but it proved just how tough the Roar are to beat when they’ve got their best players on the park.

And while the buck stops with the football department when it comes to the fact that was just Brisbane’s fourth win of the campaign, it’s hard to deny that just about everything that could go wrong has done for the Roar so far this season.

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And when Football Federation Australia reschedules A-League fixtures to help Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory with their AFC Champions League campaigns – but not Brisbane Roar – it’s easy to see why fans in Brisbane are convinced there’s a Sydney and Melbourne bias in the FFA’s decision making.

Living in Brisbane, it’s impossible not to notice what a tough commercial landscape the Roar operates in.

This is a city where the Brisbane Broncos command the lion’s share of media attention – pun intended – and where Brisbane Heat are now playing in front of sell-out summer crowds.

And when the Roar are scheduled to play Perth Glory at home on a Thursday night for the second time in less than a month, it’s no wonder barely 6,000 fans showed up.

The Roar should arguably be the Queensland equivalent of Melbourne Victory, yet a series of missteps means the club is yet to live up to its full potential.



That’s something new managing director David Pourre – who is back for his second spell at the club – is eager to change.

I sat down for a coffee with Pourre the other day, and he left me under no illusion as to the size of the task in front of him.

We talked about many things – and Pourre is an administrator with deep-seated connections within the business world – and one topic in particular piqued my interest.

It was around an article the late Mike Cockerill wrote in September 2016 about Brisbane Roar reconnecting with the club that spawned them, Richlands-based Lions FC.

Cockerill argued that with a history dating back to 1957, the link between Brisbane Roar and the club that started as Hollandia should never have been ignored.

It’s a controversial stance – and certainly not one shared by everyone in the city – yet there are parts of Cockerill’s argument that make plenty of sense.

Foremost among them is the fact that the Lions club – whose senior men’s team kick off their long-awaited return to NPL Queensland with a derby against Brisbane City at Newmarket on February 3 – boasts some 22,000 members.

How many members do Brisbane Roar currently have?



And even if the Roar are set to move their training base to Logan – and a multi-million dollar facility for a club that previously had none is nothing to sniff at – that doesn’t mean the Roar need to turn their back on a shared history.

That’s precisely why the Roar and the Lions commemorated the 60th anniversary of Hollandia’s founding by squaring off for the Heritage Shield last July.

And it’s why it probably makes commercial sense for the Roar to salve some old wounds and solidify their relationship with the Lions going forward.

If Brisbane City can harbour expansion ambitions based on the club’s Italian heritage, then why should it be such a problem for the Roar to remember their Dutch roots?

It doesn’t mean they should stop playing at Suncorp Stadium, or abandon the move to Logan.

It doesn’t even mean that the Roar shouldn’t focus on winning over new fans in 2018, rather than worrying about what happened in the past.

It just means that in a league full of what many critics insist are franchises, perhaps it’s not the worst idea for clubs like Brisbane Roar to acknowledge their history.

It couldn’t hurt, could it?

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