coaches David Neitz, Todd Viney and Adem Yze. Vote Both the Hawthorn and Melbourne Football Clubs called extraordinary general meetings – Hawthorn held their meeting at the Camberwell Civic Centre, while Melbourne held its meeting at Dallas Brooks Hall. To the surprise of the respective clubs' boards, the meeting halls were filled, with more members and supporters of each team watching proceedings on large monitors outside. Entrepreneurial peddlers set up stalls selling merchandise along the long queues into the respective meeting halls. The Hawthorn meeting was chaired by former premiership player and lawyer Richard Loveridge. The debates about the merger were passionate. When triple premiership coach Allan Jeans got up to speak on behalf of the merger the crowd shouted him down. Anti-merger coordinator Don Scott (in a now-famous moment) at one point holding up a mock-up of the Melbourne Hawks jumper, and proceeding to rip off a Velcro hawk and yellow V-neck to reveal a Melbourne jumper underneath. Prior to the commencement of the meetings, vocal anti-merger supporters chanted team songs and anti-merger slogans. While Melbourne members (aided by a large bloc of proxy votes and the inability of all interested parties to get inside the hall to vote) voted 4,679 to 4,229 in favour of the merger, Hawthorn members overwhelming voted against it by a vote of 5241 to 2841 and the proposal was defeated. Large-scale resignations followed on both boards as those who had supported the merger fell on their swords; several prominent members of the anti-merger campaigns (including Dicker, Scott, Brereton, and Gutnick) would take senior executive or board positions at both clubs in the wake of the merger. The two sides continue to play in their original form to this day. Aftermath Before the failed merger of Melbourne and Hawthorn, on 4 July 1996, the Fitzroy and Brisbane clubs had been merged by the directive of the AFL commission to take effect as the Brisbane Lions on 1 November 1996. Footscray and North Melbourne also changed their names to the Western Bulldogs and the Kangaroos respectively to attract more fans, having both been considered for mergers in the last two decades. Shortly after the season and the collapse of the Melbourne-Hawthorn merger, AFL CEO Ross Oakley, who had overseen the previous decade, stepped down and was replaced by Wayne Jackson. With the new CEO came a change in the league's off-field direction, and in October