Alastair Lynch

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Alastair Lynch
Lynch in April 2018
Personal information
Full name Alastair Graeme Lynch
Nickname(s) Lynchy
Date of birth (1968-06-19) 19 June 1968 (age 56)
Place of birth Burnie, Tasmania
Original team(s) Hobart (TFL)
Draft No. 50, 1986 national draft
Height 194 cm (6 ft 4 in)
Weight 97 kg (214 lb)
Position(s) Key Forward, Key Defender
Playing career1
Years Club Games (Goals)
1988–1993 Fitzroy 120 (173)
1994–1996 Brisbane Bears 32 (89)
1997–2004 Brisbane Lions 154 (371)
Total 306 (633)
Representative team honours
Years Team Games (Goals)
1989–1993 Tasmania 4 (1)
1 Playing statistics correct to the end of 2004.
Career highlights
Sources: AFL Tables, AustralianFootball.com

Alastair Graeme Lynch (born 19 June 1968) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played in the Australian Football League (AFL). He is best known as a three-time premiership full-forward for the Brisbane Lions.

The

All-Australian status. However, he left a financially struggling Fitzroy to join the Brisbane Bears after the club's move from the Gold Coast. With the merger of his former club Fitzroy
and new club Brisbane, Lynch rejoined with former teammates and became club captain.

A long battle with

chronic fatigue syndrome
threatened his career; however, after many years in absence, Lynch's return to form at a relatively late age in his career was hailed by the football community, and he became part of Brisbane Lions' celebrated premiership winning formula.

Lynch holds the record for the most combined goals for the merged Brisbane-Fitzroy entity and one of the last remaining former Fitzroy players to play in the AFL.

With a passion for cricket, Lynch went on to represent Australia's Over 50's team in one match against England in 2018.

Early life

Lynch was born in Burnie, north-west coastal Tasmania, the son of Graeme and Mollie Lynch, where he attended Burnie High School. He began playing football with Wynyard club where he played in the U17s and U19s before moving to Hobart. In Hobart he played senior football with the Hobart Football Club under coach Peter Hudson.

VFL/AFL career

Fitzroy Lions career (1988–1993)

Selected at pick 50 in the

1986 VFL Draft, Lynch began his senior football career at Fitzroy in 1988. He signed his first contract on 5 February. He was an intimidating player in defence, playing full-back and centre half-back. In his early years, his notable abilities were his strong marking (his outstanding aerial abilities were recognised when he won the 1989 Mark of the Year award) and heavy tackling. His titanic battles with key forwards such as Tony Lockett were highlights, and Lockett has commented on Lynch being one of his toughest opponents. In 1993, Fitzroy coach Robert Shaw moved Lynch to full-forward, where he led the club's goal-kicking with 68 goals in addition to winning the best and fairest award. Lynch also played full-back in the 1990 Tasmanian State of Origin
team, the first Tasmanian team to defeat Victoria in 30 years.

Brisbane Bears career (1994–1996)

In 1994, Lynch transferred to the Brisbane Bears. At the time, the Brisbane Bears, like the Fitzroy Football Club, were experiencing lean times, but they were improving somewhat under the coaching of premiership coach Robert Walls. The term of Lynch's contract, ten years, was unprecedented; at the time, it was considered by outsiders to be a great risk for the club.

Lynch came full of promise to the Bears. In the early years, he became a poster-boy recruit for the struggling club, which lacked big name players.

In his first few games of the

chronic fatigue syndrome), which sidelined him for the entire 1995 season. Some commentators believe that if Lynch had played that season, the Bears could have won a premiership. Others believed that Lynch contracted chronic fatigue when over-training during his rehabilitation from injury. Lynch was one of the first sportspeople in Australia to experiment with the ice bath
, which proved to assist in his recovery, and became a public figure for the illness which was struggling for credibility at the time. After the illness Lynch rarely travelled to Perth, to play the Western Australian teams at home.

In his return the following season, the Bears, struggling for forward-line talent and with an increasingly talented back-line, first experimented playing Lynch up forward to relieve an ageing Roger Merrett with some success. Successive seasons saw him interchanged between the two opposite ends of the ground.

Brisbane Lions career (1997–2004)

When Fitzroy merged with the Bears after the 1996 season to form the Brisbane Lions, Lynch was made a semi-permanent forward but was unable to perform at his peak for the next two seasons due to minor recurrence of his illness.

Lynch was appointed as club co-captain with Michael Voss in 1997, a position that he held until 2000, when Voss assumed the full captaincy.

Still struggling with intermittent lapses of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 1998, Lynch discovered that the drug he had been prescribed at the beginning of the season, although with the permission of the Australian Sports Drug Agency (official AFL drug agents), had been added to the International Olympic Committee list of banned substances. He took it upon himself to alert the AFL and was controversially charged for taking a prohibited substance before eventually being cleared.

A new beginning for Lynch and the Lions came in 1999 under champion coach Leigh Matthews. He played some games in defence but usually at full-forward. Improvements in his strength, kicking for goal, and positioning during marking contests made him one of the most feared forwards in the competition.

The Brisbane Lions enjoyed great success for the

2002, and 2003 seasons, with Lynch becoming a multiple goal-kicker against the game's most prominent full-backs, including Stephen Silvagni, Matthew Scarlett, and Shane Wakelin from Collingwood, Brisbane's ongoing rivals. In this period, Lynch played in three successive premierships. Lynch was in possession of the ball when the final siren sounded at the 2001 Grand Final to signify the club's first Premiership in 57 years. He would go on to play a key role in two further Grand Final triumphs.[1] In 2004
, he was the competition's oldest player at 36 years of age, and became the last remaining player born in the 1960s to play in the VFL/AFL.

Lynch announced his retirement after Brisbane's loss in the 2004 AFL Grand Final. It was viewed by some as a disappointing end to his career; he injured his quad early in the game, his only statistic for the day was giving away a free kick which led to Port Adelaide's first goal for the match, and he would have missed the first ten matches of 2005 after being reported a record-equalling seven times for exchanging punches in an all-out fight with Port Adelaide's Darryl Wakelin, for which Lynch was also fined $15,000. Lynch has since admitted significant regret about his behaviour in the match.[2]

Statistics

[3]
Legend
  G  
Goals
  K  
 Kicks
  D  
 Disposals 
  T  
 Tackles
  B  
Behinds
 
  H  
 Handballs 
  M  
Marks
Season Team No. Games Totals Averages (per game) Votes
G B K H D M T G B K H D M T
1988 Fitzroy 11 18 24 16 117 42 159 64 10 1.3 0.9 6.5 2.3 8.8 3.6 0.6 0
1989 Fitzroy 11 18 26 12 138 40 178 79 9 1.4 0.7 7.7 2.2 9.9 4.4 0.5 1
1990 Fitzroy 11 22 19 34 217 57 274 120 17 0.9 1.5 9.9 2.6 12.5 5.5 0.8 0
1991 Fitzroy 11 22 9 14 215 75 290 88 28 0.4 0.6 9.8 3.4 13.2 4.0 1.3 4
1992 Fitzroy 11 20 27 13 159 63 222 74 15 1.4 0.7 8.0 3.2 11.1 3.7 0.8 2
1993 Fitzroy 11 20 68 31 260 68 328 143 12 3.4 1.6 13.0 3.4 16.4 7.2 0.6 10
1994 Brisbane Bears 11 13 35 22 146 32 178 81 6 2.7 1.7 11.2 2.5 13.7 6.2 0.5 7
1995 Brisbane Bears 11 1 2 0 6 5 11 5 1 2.0 0.0 6.0 5.0 11.0 5.0 1.0 0
1996 Brisbane Bears 11 18 52 34 153 32 185 87 7 2.9 1.9 8.5 1.8 10.3 4.8 0.4 2
1997 Brisbane Lions 11 20 12 7 155 62 217 89 10 0.6 0.4 7.8 3.1 10.9 4.5 0.5 0
1998 Brisbane Lions 11 15 10 7 109 63 172 55 10 0.7 0.5 7.3 4.2 11.5 3.7 0.7 0
1999 Brisbane Lions 11 17 31 20 99 27 126 63 8 1.8 1.2 5.8 1.6 7.4 3.7 0.5 0
2000 Brisbane Lions 11 22 68 25 184 49 233 124 17 3.1 1.1 8.4 2.2 10.6 5.6 0.8 3
2001† Brisbane Lions 11 23 58 34 154 59 213 93 18 2.5 1.5 6.7 2.6 9.3 4.0 0.8 3
2002† Brisbane Lions 11 22 74 30 161 42 203 102 14 3.4 1.4 7.3 1.9 9.2 4.6 0.6 4
2003† Brisbane Lions 11 22 78 36 161 44 205 101 15 3.5 1.6 7.3 2.0 9.3 4.6 0.7 5
2004 Brisbane Lions 11 13 40 22 78 18 96 54 2 3.1 1.7 6.0 1.4 7.4 4.2 0.2 2
Career 306 633 357 2512 778 3290 1422 199 2.1 1.2 8.2 2.5 10.8 4.6 0.7 43

Post-VFL/AFL career

Following his retirement from playing football, Lynch has commentated for

Bounce with Jason Dunstall, Danny Frawley and Andrew Gaze
. He also co-wrote a book with Peter Blucher titled, "Taking Nothing For Granted", which was released in 2005.

Career highlights

References

  1. ^ "Alastair Lynch - lions.com.au". www.lions.com.au. Archived from the original on 4 April 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  2. The Daily Telegraph
    . Retrieved 8 August 2011.
  3. ^ Alastair Lynch's player profile at AFL Tables
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