The club discovered ING are using a mascot of the same name through Roar fans, who spotted the ING promotional lion on TV coverage of the Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne.

ING, a multinational banking and financial services giant, has seemingly come up with their own version of Roary to woo young F1 supporters.

Trademarked Roary has been the club's official mascot since the inception of the A-League in August 2005 and is popular with young Roar fans. The side's kids club is also named in his honour.

Roar management alerted both the FFA and ING yesterday and discussions are set to continue over the next few days.

CEO of Queensland Roar, Lawrence Oudendyk, joked that Roary was too young to get involved in a tug-of-war and should return to his home town of Brisbane.

"As we are in our off-season Roary doesn’t have much work with us until later in the year but we didn’t expect him to be moonlighting elsewhere; we thought he would be on holiday," laughed a stunned Oudendyk.

"He belongs in Brisbane and we thought he’d be saving his energy for the new season. We don’t recall placing him on the transfer list so as far as we’re concerned he’s still ours."