The Brisbane Lions Want To Parade An Actual, Real-Life Lion Before Home Games

So this is an actual idea that someone came up with and thought was good.

The AFL is pushing an initiative for clubs to enhance their “Match Day Experience” for home games from next year onwards. This is in response to the overwhelming, and growing, success of the Port Adelaide Power‘s “Never Tear Us Apart” observance before home games, where the crowd raises up their scarves as the first verse of the INXS song of the same name is played throughout the ground – not at all unlike English soccer terrace anthems, like Liverpool‘s iconic “You’ll Never Walk Alone” singalong.

Some teams have already got their own little unique quirks for home games. The Western Bulldogs has a bulldog mascot, who has his own kennel on the boundary line with the cheers squad at Etihad Stadium. The Essendon Bombers have a traditional, hand-cranked air raid siren that is rung as the team runs out onto the ground.
The Brisbane Lions are now trying to get on board, proposing that before all home games at the Gabba, they parade an actual, real-life, no fooling Lion around the ground.
I repeat: the Brisbane Lions – a football club that hosts games at an arena with low fences behind which human beings sit – would like to parade an ACTUAL FUCKING LION around the ground before games.
The Lions football club is seemingly working with its partners at Australia Zoo, as well as with animal welfare groups, trying to find out if the plan is feasible. The club’s General Manager of Communications, Steele Tallon stated the following on Twitter.

Which is kind of like the “some of my best friends are gay” excuse of potential animal rights violations.

Remarkably, people with the ability to do so have not dismissed this for the terrible idea that it is. The club’s CEO Greg Swann spoke with SEN earlier this morning and made the ironically not incorrect statement, “we think the kids would be absolutely beside themselves.
Even more worrying is the fact that newly minted AFL boss Gillon McLachlan seems at the very least intrigued by the idea.

Greg is making noise up there in Brisbane and we love that. I love the fact he’s pushing the envelope.

Already people are expressing anger and outrage at the proposal, with a Change.org petition quickly going up, with over 600 people already on board.
A wild animal being paraded in front of tens of thousands of screaming and yelling fans, with loud sirens going off intermittently. Nope. Can’t think of anything that could go wrong there.

Photo: Matt Roberts via Getty Images.

via AFL.

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