There is a wall at the back of the Royal Derby Hotel in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy that has paid tribute to key personnel behind the foundation of the Brisbane Lions lying 1765 kilometres away.

That watering hole in the famous inner Melbourne suburb is where Fitzroy Football Club is never far away from the minds of its Royboys brigade fans in spite many fans accepting and celebrating the three Brisbane flags like they were their last in 1944.

So did Gunditjmara man Chris Johnson, the last of the Fitzroy players to run out onto an AFL arena through the merged club until his retirement in 2007.

That love moved on from Brunswick Street Oval, the spiritual home of his club, to the Gabba, the old Lions home of convenience, only came about when Johnson embraced Brisbane through a Lions warrior, 1969 Brownlow Medallist, Kevin 'Bulldog' Murray.

Murray kept the spirit of Lions alive in Fitzroy, while embracing what proved to be a controversial interstate merger, with a grace and class of his revered stewardship for both identities.

"He speaks so highly of the Lions and the merger," Johnson told CODE sports.

"He was shattered we merged, but you went with it or you didn't.

"He brought the Fitzroy community along with the merger.

"It was disappointing for him to see a club that he represented as a kid in the streets of Fitzroy fold or merge, but he took it on the chin and embraced the Brisbane Lions."

Murray had followed in his dad's footsteps, Dan, also a half back flanker, who was the the reserve for Fitzroy in the 1944 premiership side.

The Fitzroy supporter turned club favourite was joined by another father/son product in the latest mural at the iconic Brunswick Street pub after Jonathan Brown was later drafted through dad Brian, who played 51 games, to the club join teammate Johnson.

"It's pretty significant," Johnson said of the street-art mural honour.

"I was approached by the publican and the head of the Lions in Melbourne, Sam Lord, so I was pretty happy to be next to 'Bulldog' and 'Browny'.

"I was the last Fitzroy player to play in the AFL, so to be on a wall in Brunswick Street is a real privilege.

"The Fitzroy Reds still play at Brunswick Street Oval, so, yeah, I was pretty chuffed to be asked."

Johnson only played from 1994 to 1996 for Fitzroy in the team's final dying days of a promising career, but he lapped up the 2001-03 AFL flags with both the Fitzroy mob, down the road at Brunswick Street Oval, and at the Gabba on the return to Brisbane.

The Lions mural is a timely reminder to Johnson to never forget Fitzroy once humble suburban roots that once provided homes for arriving Koori mobs looking for work from all parts of Victoria.

It was also the first, then, VFL club that accepted First Nations when it recruited Joe Johnson, who is not related to his namesake but grew up a suburb away from Fitzroy, appeared 55 times across three seasons from 1904 until 1906, and won two flags.

Most famous of all was the tale that Fitzroy led by Brownlow Medallist Haydn Bunton first welcomed Doug Nicholls to the club when neighbouring rival, Carlton – and its trainers – mistreated the Yorta Yorta star-in-the-making.

Bunton was notably the first Fitzroy player to outstretch his hand the moment the diminutive player walked in the clubrooms after the club invited Nicholls to train.

That kind of attitude always had Johnson thinking what sort of team Fitzroy always was and that it represented the historically downtrodden in society.

Three decades on since walking through the doors of the club of the perennial post-war strugglers, who held meat tray raffles inside Fitzroy pubs to keep its entity alive, Johnson has questioned whether more could have been done to save his Fitzroy.

"You always think where your life would be if the merger didn't happen?" Johnson said.

"You wonder if the AFL did everything possible it could to help Fitzroy.

"You look around the competition and see the debt at so many football clubs.

"Clearly, the AFL is supporting them and it's a different management to what it once was back then.

"The AFL needed to expand the competition and Fitzroy happened to be the team they wanted to move on with a national platform."

The running back pocket star in three premierships with Brisbane was very mindful of what traditional Fitzroy supporters would make of their first success of any kind amid 57 years of premiership starvation.

Then in a blink of an eye, there was three in a row.

It was hard then for card-carrying supporters bar the most defiant Lion not willing to accept Brisbane's first flags as Fitzroy's too.

Johnson turned out for 59 games at Fitzroy, which the Indigenous team of the century member believed was equally as important as the 205 appearances in Brisbane.

The three wooden spoons – Johnson played in another at Brisbane in 1998 – drove the No.7 draft pick to lift his performance levels at Fitzroy, after earlier impressing scouts with seven goals in the state league under-18s grand final for the Northern Knights.

"I wasn't on the draft radar until probably three months before, but as I came into the TAC Cup, I had the blinder in the grand final," Johnson said.

"So to get my name called out as a top-10 draft pick, a kid from the northern suburbs, a kid who didn't like school and school didn't like me, was beyond my wildest dreams.

"It was an opportunity for me and Fitzroy gave me that opportunity to be drafted, and to go and play on was outstanding."

Unlike both Murray and Brown, Johnson did not barrack for Fitzroy but Carlton, of all teams, but there was always some sort of a connection to Fitzroy the football club and to Fitzroy the suburb.

His uncle Ronnie Johnson was involved in Fitzroy's Past Player Association, and could always sneak the kid from West Meadows into the dressing rooms to meet players.

Johnson's father owned a tailor shop in Fitzroy for years - not far from the pub where his son's face is now displayed on its wall – on the corner of Fitzroy's Brunswick Street and Alexandra Parade that filled Johnson with pride.

"Dad always worked hard," Johnson said.

"His dream was to give his family an opportunity to live the best life possible.

"He is the man who I am today.

"He showed me what love is all about and what it is to be connected to family culture because he was the rock for his family."