Senior Jarryd Lyons (2018-)

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I have gone out on a limb and predicted that Lyons will finish second in the Bigfooty BF, the thinking man's award but I am now firmly of the opinion that Lyons is now by far the most under rated player in the league. Have a look at the league tables on footy wire and that Lyons is in the top bracket in all indicators.

However on the AFL site they do not include Lyons as a possible All Australian. Hugh get a gig despite an obvious drop in form this year. Andrews gets a gig despite lowering his colours a few times this year. Now these players have had good years but (IMO) nowhere as good as Lyons' year so far. If we didn't have Neale we would be drooling over Lyons.
 
DERRINALPHIL said:
I have gone out on a limb and predicted that Lyons will finish second in the Bigfooty BF, the thinking man's award but I am now firmly of the opinion that Lyons is now by far the most under rated player in the league. Have a look at the league tables on footy wire and that Lyons is in the top bracket in all indicators.

However on the AFL site they do not include Lyons as a possible All Australian. Hugh get a gig despite an obvious drop in form this year. Andrews gets a gig despite lowering his colours a few times this year. Now these players have had good years but (IMO) nowhere as good as Lyons' year so far. If we didn't have Neale we would be drooling over Lyons.
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Besides Neale has probably been our most consistent performer.
 
DERRINALPHIL said:
I have gone out on a limb and predicted that Lyons will finish second in the Bigfooty BF, the thinking man's award but I am now firmly of the opinion that Lyons is now by far the most under rated player in the league. Have a look at the league tables on footy wire and that Lyons is in the top bracket in all indicators.

However on the AFL site they do not include Lyons as a possible All Australian. Hugh get a gig despite an obvious drop in form this year. Andrews gets a gig despite lowering his colours a few times this year. Now these players have had good years but (IMO) nowhere as good as Lyons' year so far. If we didn't have Neale we would be drooling over Lyons.
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Yes I‘ve been trying to get a fix On where Lyons sits in terms of A grade/B grade, but I am starting to see him as an A grader. Compare him to Simon Black. Black had better vision and was a better distributer out of congestion. However I would rate Lyons as high in terms of work rate, getting to contests and having an impact, probably more blocking for others. We don’t have good stats from Black’s era on pressure acts ,but I guess Lyons may be better. He is consistently in he top three for Pressure acts. Black, of course is an all time great, a much higher level than an A grader. However I think the comparison puts Lyons relatively high in the ranking of players.
 

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I'd have Lyons 2nd in our BnF. Andrews probably third.

Been a great pickup but the pressure is now on to make the most of him, Neale, Cameron and the others who might start declining in a couple of years.
 
Eight things we learned
8. If Neale doesn't get you, Lyons will
After watching Lachie Neale run riot on Wednesday night against Gold Coast, Sydney made sure the same wouldn't happen against it, assigning Ryan Clarke to tag the Brownlow Medal favourite. Clarke did a terrific job, restricting Neale to three disposals in the first quarter and eight in the first half. However, while Neale was quiet, Jarryd Lyons flourished, easily the most dominant midfielder on the ground. Lyons is putting together another superb season and showing Brisbane has more strings to its midfield bow than Neale alone.
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10 biggest All-Australian squad snubs
Jarryd Lyons (Brisbane Lions)

Trying to earn a spot in the All-Australian midfield brigade is mightily difficult, but Lions fans would’ve loved to have seen Lyons rewarded with a spot in the squad for his 2020 efforts. The Brisbane on-baller had a seriously underrated season, finishing as the seventh-ranked midfielder according to the AFL Player Ratings. He averaged 21.8 disposals — he dipped below 20 disposals just three times — 5.7 score involvements and 4.1 inside 50s. He ranked among the AFL’s top 10 for score involvements, while he was also in the top 16 for average inside 50s, contested possessions and clearances.
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Brisbane Lions midfield jet Jarryd Lyons on overcoming delisting to become a star

Jarryd Lyons is on the phone fresh from a Brisbane weights session and his inquisitor is looking for a fresh angle on a story of a battler-made-good.
Do we have to bang on about Gold Coast rejecting him again, he is asked, after his 24-possession, seven clearance masterclass against Richmond.

“Yeah, Cornesey has whipped that horse again,” he says with a chuckle after his bizarre delisting from Gold Coast in late 2019 has been reheated as a storyline this week.

Brisbane’s newest finals thinks for a moment and offers this about a journey from Adelaide to Gold Coast to the Lions that has him within a single victory of a Grand Final he never believed was possible.

“I have been reflecting on it a bit. And I have done it the hard way all my life. All my career I have had so many different coaches. Chris Fagan is number eleven.

“I have been the sub 15 or 20 times, I have been dropped 13 times which is in the top three. So I guess doing it the hard way is the way I played footy. Nothing has ever come easy. I have never been the best runner, I have always had to work on my speed …. But I could always win my own ball.”

Lyons, a 28-year-old who has lived more lows than highs in a decade in football, is another one of Chris Fagan’s ugly ducklings.

For every No.1 pick like Cam Rayner there is an unheralded role-player like Lyons or No.37 rookie selection Oscar McInerney or key back Ryan Lester that is coming up big.

Lyons is aware a procession of coaches underrated him, which is what turned him into such a football journeyman.

But the only person in his life who truly never lost faith was Lyons himself.

Lyons is actually equal fifth on the list of the most dropped players, with Dawson Simpson dropped 16 times.

The bloke in second spot is Lester, left out of Brisbane’s side 14 times to Lyons’ 13.

If you wanted a symbol of Fagan’s coaching success it is the bloke who took Jack Riewoldt to the cleaners and their midfield extractor getting it done despite being dropped a combined 27 times.

He admits he needed to smooth out the rough edges of his game and is thankful he got the time to do it in an AFL system without being thrown onto the scrap heap.

“I guess growing up they call it footy IQ in a way. I didn’t necessarily have speed of legs but I had speed of mind. I could see the game well. But it was always the same reason (I got dropped) in the early days. I just wasn’t fast enough or I just wasn’t spreading enough. It was just aerobic capacity. I couldn’t go.”

In his first five years with Adelaide he played just 32 games as the No.61 draft pick watched top-20 selections as they were handed games on a platter.

Finally he realised it was up to him to break into the senior side.

“Adelaide was a really successful club and I learnt a lot there and they had terrific people like Scott Camporeale who pushed me really hard but I was never gifted a game.

“In my first five or six years we were always finishing high so being that No.61 draft bracket I was never given games and it helped me grow as a person. I think I see the game well but it’s hard until you are playing well. It wasn’t until 2015 that I had a really big off-season and turned it into a big 2016.”

That off-season Adelaide’s extremely modest contract offer meant he snapped up a multi-year offer at Gold Coast.

He responded with a pair of identical seasons in 2017 and 2018 — 90 and 92 ranking point average, 24.6 and 23.8 possessions and off-the-charts clearance numbers.

But as Lyons says, a bone spur in the 2017 season meant he hobbled from stoppage to stoppage in a way that heightened his lack of athleticism.

With Gold Coast keen to hand midfield time to the likes of Jack Bowes and Will Brodie, they told him to consider his options.

Brisbane came calling through Fagan and list manager Dom Ambrosio, offering a two-season deal and a chance to shore up his future.

He still remains bemused the Suns weren’t prepared to persevere with him given he knew he could fix the bone spur.

“When you look back you laugh a little bit. I have no ill feelings. I had surgery at the end of 2017 and it was the best thing I could have done. I just don’t think Gold Coast trusted me as a player. But Brisbane did. I knew I had done the work and they put their faith in me and it’s nice to repay them, I guess.”

Has he crossed paths with Stewart Dew to chat about his exit?

“Um, I haven’t spoken to Dewey directly in two years. I wouldn’t have any hard feelings. He has probably lost out more than I have...”

Lyons still nearly stayed despite the Brisbane interest and says he and manager Winston Rous have talked this year about how his career might have been over by now if he did.

“You never know how it could have ended up. I was willing to stay. I was about to stay. It was only going to be two years at Brisbane, the third year was locked in and we did some work on the third year when the door opened up to being delisted but at the time Brisbane had only just finished 15th and Gold Coast had finished 17th. But getting three years was massive. I knew I would have three years to prove myself, I wasn’t on a knife edge for another year not knowing what was going to happen.

“I knew Lachie Neale really well after playing with him in the SANFL when I was at the Crows and of course my brother (Corey) was here which was even bigger for me.”

Lyons’ line-in-the-sand moment came early in the 2019 season and eventually cemented his relationship with coach Fagan.

“My first game here was all right and then I played three really bad ones in a row and I said to Fages, “If you want to drop me I would understand”.

“But he said that hadn’t even crossed his mind and we played Gold Coast the next week. I came out and had my best game of the season and had 28 possessions and two goals and since that day I have never looked back. I went on to play the next 20 games and I think after that I thought,” I am happy, I belong here and I am in for the long haul”.

Like all Brisbane players he has his own unique relationship with Fagan, one only strengthened by Lyon’s elevation into the leadership group this year.

“Asked about Fagan’s secret to success, he says: “I think to be an AFL coach you need to be a little bit weird in some sort of way”.

“But he is a footy nut, he loves his footy, he loves the game and he’s very calm as a person. He’s just easy to approach and talk to, he is a lot older than any other coach I have had so he has life experience, he loves talking about life and you as a person rather than just you as a footballer and it’s rubbed off. The whole staff is like that now and as a playing group it’s about playing footy and living your life and enjoying it.”

But what about the weirdness?

“Oh gee, where do I start,” says Lyon.

“You can be having a conversation with him and you walk away and he’s just thinking. Or you walk past his office and he’s just sitting on a chair not doing anything, just looking into the air and thinking. He’s a massive thinker. He always has an angle and he’s always trying to get better.”


The pair have spent countless hours with Neale scheming about the centre-square strategies that helped beat Richmond.

As Lyons says, it isn’t about losing stoppages, it’s how you lose them.

Force an opponent to kick over your fingers and it creates dirty ball that Harris Andrews and co. can intercept.

Allow them to storm forward out of a stoppage with room to move and it spells doom for the back six.

Finally Lyons is where he always dreamt he might be with his AFL career, playing consistent footy at a successful club and with a contract for next season.

A trigger clause he will tick off midway through next season will hand him an extension to 2022.

But more to the point, he is in a side capable of something special.

“This is a team that I see as being very capable for a long time. You can smell it and I think the way we played on Friday night showed it as well.”
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Merrett-Murray Medal 2020

His midfield partner Jarryd Lyons won the Nigel Lappin Trophy for runner-up with 269 votes while McCluggage took home the Alastair Lynch trophy for third place with 237 votes.
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One of a kind: The player every AFL club simply cannot afford to lose in 2021
Jarryd Lyons

We rightly wax lyrical about Lachie Neale and Dayne Zorko. But Jarryd Lyons’ defensive traits have, like so many parts of his game in recent years, gone under the radar as his midfield compatriots play with a bit more attacking flair. The Lions lost All-Australian defender Harris Andrews for a stretch this year but still handled it incredibly well. Replacing and working around the loss of Lyons would be a different proposition entirely given how vital he is to the midfield dynamic of the Lions. Finished second only to Neale in the best and fairest count this year and rightly so.
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Lions midfielder Jarryd Lyons to celebrate 50 matches for Brisbane without Lachie Neale

For the first time in his Brisbane career, Jarryd Lyons won’t have fellow midfield star Lachie Neale alongside him when the Lions host Port Adelaide at the Gabba on Saturday night.

The pair, who both joined the Lions in 2019, were scheduled this weekend to celebrate 50 AFL matches each for Brisbane.

However, an ankle injury suffered by Brownlow medallist Neale in the Lions’ 18-point win over Carlton last Saturday at Marvel Stadium means it will only be Lyons achieving his half-century Brisbane milestone against the Power.

“It’s like a little break-up,” Lyons said.

“We’re going to miss him (Neale) out there. It’s going to be different out there having one less leader in that midfield. He’s been great to bounce ideas off together rolling through there.

“(But) it just means blokes like ‘Zorks’ (captain Dayne Zorko) and Zac Bailey are going to come through there a bit more regularly and step up.”

As are fringe players such as Rhys Mathieson, who seems set to receive a rare AFL opportunity in the absence of Neale, who will be sidelined for eight weeks.

“For a bloke that’s probably been one of the most unlucky footballers going around at the moment, his team-first mentality over the last six weeks has been amazing,” Lyons said.

“He’s just always up and about. I think he’s been emergency (player) every week. He’s always with our group with these training sessions, he’s just happy, he’s always up and about, he’s the barometer for us … he’s worked so hard to get there.

“He reminds me of myself in the early days when I couldn’t crack (a spot). I’ve been empathising with him and keeping him up and about, but he’s certainly done that himself.

“Everyone wants to see him do well. He deserves to do well.”

Mathieson’s determination and hardworking attitude will be crucial against a Power side that has won five from six this season.

The Lions’ record of three wins and three losses has been less convincing, although the hosts are chasing a third successive victory this weekend.

“We didn’t show up early days … three and three is fair,” Lyons said.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do now, but it’s good to square the ledger again.”
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Groin injury continues to keep Brisbane Lions star Jarrod Berry off the park

While the Lions midfield will be without Berry and Brownlow medallist Lachie Neale (ankle), Jarryd Lyons is again set to rise to the occasion against his former club who made the baffling decision to delist him at the end of the 2018 season.

“I think since he’s been at our club he’s grown considerably into one of the smarter midfielders going around ... he’s been an A-grader in every regard,” Fagan said of the 28-year-old ex-Sun.

“He’s a little unheralded and people don’t give him the plaudits that other midfielders get, but in terms of consistency, in terms of leadership, he’s been excellent from the day he arrived at the club.”
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Lyons QClash Performance Stuns Suns

Brisbane midfielder Jarryd Lyons said he played with a point to prove against former club Gold Coast on Saturday night.

Lyons won his first Marcus Ashcroft Medal when racking up 37 disposals, nine clearances and nine tackles in the Lions' thumping 73-point victory.

While Gold Coast coach Stuart Dew denied it stung seeing the player it delisted in 2018 succeed against his team, the man himself said it motivated him.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't (motivated)," Lyons said on Monday morning.

"I guess I kind of have a point to prove, but in a way it's all been done.

"I just want to play good footy no matter who it's against at the moment."

Lyons is a perfect 4-0 against the Suns since joining their Queensland rivals, averaging 30 disposals and a goal a game.

He has been a catalyst for Brisbane's five-game winning streak, leading a midfield that has continued to flourish despite the absence of Brownlow medallist Lachie Neale with an ankle injury.

Lyons said Friday night's blockbuster against Richmond was the ultimate test.

"We've had some cracking games against them over the last two years and they're the benchmark," he said.

"That qualifying final last year was probably our best game we've played as a group over the last three years. We'll have to replicate that.

"I wouldn't say it's a grudge match. Last year we beat them but they went on to win the flag and the year before they touched us up in the finals."
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