Biography
Paul Roos was born on 27th June 1963 and was recruited to Fitzroy from Beverley Hills, deep in the heart of the club’s traditional recruiting zone. Wearing the number one guernsey throughout his entire 356 game career, Roos developed into one of the most versatile and highly regarded players of his generation, equally capable at half back, on the ball or through the midfield.
Roos made his debut for Fitzroy in 1982 and quickly established himself as a key contributor to the club. Strong overhead and excellent at ground level, he combined toughness with genuine skill, traits that saw him rated among the best players in the competition during the mid to late 1980s. His individual quality was reflected in five Mitchell Medals as Fitzroy’s best and fairest, won in 1985, 1986, 1991, 1992 and 1994, and two EJ Whitten Medals as the VFL and AFL Players Association’s most valuable player, in 1985 and 1988.
1986 was arguably the finest season of Roos’s career, polling a career high 16 Brownlow votes to finish runner-up in the count. Across his career he was named an All-Australian on seven occasions, twice while serving as captain, cementing his status as one of the finest players never to win a Brownlow Medal outright. He captained Fitzroy for six seasons, from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1992 to 1994, leading the club through a difficult period as it fought to remain competitive and financially viable in the increasingly professionalised competition.
At the end of the 1994 season, with Fitzroy’s long term future under threat, Roos crossed to the Sydney Swans, where he played a further four seasons from 1995 to 1998. Though his output naturally eased in the later stages of his career, he continued to provide valuable experience and leadership to a rebuilding Sydney list, retiring at the end of 1998 with 356 games and 289 goals to his name.
In recognition of his standing as one of the finest and most versatile players of his era, Paul Roos was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2005. Fittingly, that same year he returned to Sydney in a different capacity, this time as senior coach, guiding the Swans to a premiership in 2005 that broke a 72 year drought for the club, adding a remarkable coaching achievement to an already outstanding playing career.
