The podcast - and tattoos - connecting Brisbane Lions fans across Australia and beyond

Diehard Brisbane fan Dom Fay booked his flights to Melbourne and accommodation near the MCG “a few months ago”. Such is the confidence of a Lions supporter these days, as the team prepares to contest a third straight grand final.

With a ticket to watch Saturday’s premiership decider secured, ordinary fans might spend the rest of the week counting down the days until the big game and checking for updates on Lachie Neale’s calf.

For Fay, as one half of the Roar Deal, the days after Brisbane’s preliminary final win over Collingwood were spent scrambling to organise a live show, a grand final brunch and a March to the ‘G. Fortunately, he has done it all twice before, along with podcast co-host, Michael Whiting. But it wasn’t always this way.

“The year I became a proper, fully signed-up member, obsessive Brisbane Lions fan was 2010,” Fay says. “We won our first four and then barely won again. It began nine years of absolute despair, so I didn’t time it particularly well in terms of jumping on the bandwagon.”

Growing up in a family that followed rugby league, Fay missed Brisbane’s glorious start to the millennium – a three-peat of premierships and average crowds of more than 33,000 at the Gabba. By the time Fay and his father, Richard, committed to going “all in together” on the Lions, the club’s dynasty was long gone and home crowds were on the way to bottoming out at below half of their peak.

“The years were so bleak for a while there that my dad and I, who are complete needle-phobes and the least likely tattoo people on the planet, made a joking deal in 2016 that if we ever saw a Lions flag together, we would get premiership tattoos,” Fay says.

Brisbane were not just off-Broadway. They were out of sight, and out of mind. Playing away from the intense glare of the football media in the heartland states proved a blessing in disguise as the club reached the finals only once in 14 seasons from 2005. But that left little to satisfy the heartiest supporters like Fay, who had high hopes of breaking into sports media, a friend-of-a-friend connection with AFL reporter Whiting, and an idea for reaching fans like himself.

“When you’re a diehard footy fan, it’s not just the game on the weekend, you’re living and breathing it all through the week,” Fay says. “You want to feel as close and connected as you can. Even in the darkest days, there was a core of Lions fans who would have loved a way to go deeper in their support of the club, but there was just nothing for them. We thought it would be cool to speak into that void.”

In grand final week sign up for our free AFL newsletter

The podcast was launched from the inner sanctum of the club in 2013 with regular access to players, but challenges around what could – and couldn’t – be said. Fay and Whiting were pushed out of the Lions’ den – for a second time – in 2022 and prepared to end it all there. But enough fans – of the podcast, as much as the club – reached out to convince them to keep the Roar Deal going and set it up independently.

The Roar Deal is now the centrepiece of a community that stretches far beyond the Lions’ home base and roots in Fitzroy, as Fay and Whiting spend several hours each week on “talking all things Brisbane Lions”. As well as a weekly podcast, the Roar Deal offers livestreams, Q&A sessions, watch parties and merch. There are paid-up members and long-time listeners from all parts of the globe.

“We get messages each week from people across the country and across the world who feel like the podcast is their way to stay connected to the club,” Fay says. “I went travelling a bit at the end of last year, and a few Roar Deal listeners reached out to ask me to join them for dinner. So I had dinner with a Roar Deal listener who was living in Paris, another in Barcelona, and another who lived in London.”

Fay and his father now have their premiership tattoos, after the Lions broke a 21-year drought in the grand final last year. They were joined by almost a dozen Roar Deal listeners in getting inked with the hook of the “first tattoo club” helping to lure in fans who were nervous about making the commitment but, Fay says, “had been through those rough years for the Lions together”.

The celebrations peaked a couple of months after the grand final when the Roar Deal duo and Lions coach Chris Fagan sat down in front of 700 fans to review the 2024 premiership. Fay calls the show the “best night of my life”.

“When we were bad, the podcast sometimes made it harder to be a Lions fan, because I couldn’t just park it and not think about football; I still had to talk about the game,” he says. “But when we got good, the podcast has made it so much better to be a fan. And it has provided opportunities I could never have dreamed of.”

Fay and Whiting will be back on stage on Thursday – this time alongside Brisbane great Simon Black at the Royal Derby Hotel in Fitzroy – to talk about the 2025 grand final and the Lions’ hopes of going back-to-back. The show sold out in six minutes but another Roar Deal pre-game event on Saturday is free as Lions fans are invited to meet at Federation Square and walk to the MCG.

The live show and march have quickly become a well-trodden path for Lions fans as their side sets off for a third consecutive grand final. But Fay still bears the scars of the darker years, as he concedes that the bookings he made earlier this year were all refundable.

Click here to read article