Australian Football League (AFL) club Brisbane Lions CEO Greg Swann has flagged his interest in attaining a live lion to act as the mascot for the Brisbane Lions and parade in front of thousands of screaming fans. This is an attempt to make home football matches more exciting and comes following a challenege by the AFL CEO to football clubs to revamp the excitement of their home games to attract more fans. 

The problem with this proposal is that is continues a trend of exploiting animals for our amusement. A Lion does not belong on a football field. There are many alternative methods of entertainment that Brisbane Lions may employ to attract more fans to the games. Perhaps winning more games would be a good place to start. The cruel and unnecessary exploitation of a wild animal is not, and should not, be one of these methods.

Lions are naturally a wild animal and as such must be "trained" to obey their handler. Similarly to circus trained animals, violence is the only way to make wild animals submit and do unnatural acts (i.e. parade around in front of thousands of screaming fans). Training sessions often involve beatings to establish a superiority over the poor lion. Inevitably, this leads to neurotic behavious developing, seeing lions pace back and forth in their enclosure or cage and even sometimes resorting to self-mutilation. 

Please help to show both the AFL and Brisbane Lions that you do not want to attend a game of football that exploits animals to raise revenue. A lion is not meant to be locked in a tiny steel cage and be paraded in front of thousands of screaming and gauking fans. It is unnecessary and inappropriate. 

For more infomation see http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/brisbane-keen-to-add-roar-appeal-with-lion-at-games-20140910-10f6ru.html

If you would like to make your own complaints you can also contact the Lions and the AFL on social media to get this ridiculous idea shut down immediately:

Contact the Lions on facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BrisbaneLions

Contact the AFL on facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AFL

Contact the Lions on twitter - @brisbanelions - https://twitter.com/brisbanelions

Contact the AFL on twitter - @AFL - https://twitter.com/AFL