Alastair Lynch

Alastair Lynch's Biography

Alastair Lynch made his senior debut at Wynyard and was drafted from Hobart at No.50 in the very first AFL National Draft in 1986. He played 120 games with Fitzroy (1988-1993) and 186 games with Brisbane Bears/Lions (1994-2004).
Alastair Lynch will be remembered as one of the all-time greats of AFL football after a career which spanned 17 years and 306 games at the highest level. He was a former captain and key member of the history making Brisbane Lions team that won a premiership hat-trick in 2001-02-03 to be rated arguably the best team of all-time.
He defied a career-threatening illness in 1995, later diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, to become an inspiration to the thousands of CFS sufferers in Australia. Not only did he get back to playing football at the elite level after missing all but one game in 1995 but he took his game to a new level and played some of his best football as the oldest player in the competition in his latter years.
Born in Burnie and raised in Wynyard in north-western Tasmania, the powerhouse full forward and one-time fullback played six years at Fitzroy and 11 years in Brisbane. An All-Australian selection in 1993, he was Lions co-captain from 1997-2000 and remained a highly regarded leader of the star-studded Lions outfit despite the selfless decision at the end of 2000 to stand down from the captaincy, allowing Michael Voss to do the job solo.
He stamped his indelible mark in the AFL record books in his final season in 2004 when he became the 23rd player to kick 600 AFL goals, and the 43rd player overall and the first Tasmanian to play 300 AFL games. He also ranks equal 5th in all-time AFL finals goals.
In recognition of the high regard in which he is held by the football community, he was chosen in the Fitzroy Team of the Century and the Tasmanian Team of the Century, and was further honoured part-way through 2004 when Tasmanian football’s highest individual award, formerly the William Leitch Medal, was re-named the Alastair Lynch Medal.
Alastair Lynch is now well settled in Brisbane, enjoying the multitude of business and media opportunities and challenges that present themselves in life after football. In August 2005 he released a best-selling autobiography titled “Taking Nothing For Granted”, which traces his fight against CFS and his football career.
In high demand as a corporate motivational speaker, Alastair also writes a newspaper column in Brisbane and Hobart, does radio commentary with Triple M and appears regularly on ‘Fox Footy’.