Review Round 10, 2025 - Brisbane Lions vs. Narrm

[Zacs_Magic_Tooth]

I kept the faith last year deep into our losing run and I won't at all be surprised if we go bang after the bye. A few here need reminding that flags aren't won in May, and no doubt the senior players are scheduling in their annual midseason slump coffee date... But I am frustrated - we have clearly been a little complacent this year and it culminated in that 4th qtr effort today. The great teams punish, but we aren't up to the challenges thrown so far this year and opponents just don't fear us. It's up to the boys to reset the attitude, and they've done it before. The Hawthorn challenge is coming at the perfect time I think.

 

[martinson]

Absolutely agree with this. In terms of forward pressure I thought our best game was against Gold Coast when McKenna played forward, where his tackling and pressure was excellent. And this allowed Cameron to play a much more offensive role and undoubtedly his best game of the year. I thought McKenna was very stiff to be dropped and replaced by Lohmann who is obviously underdone as a result of his ankle injury. Ah Chee also looks like he is struggling with fitness so we definitely need more ground level support in there imo.

Cal was in our best players most weeks when he was struggling with the knee and since he discarded the strapping he can't get near it. Lohman just isn't up to it right now ,completely off the pace .Charlie is just frustrating but has a moment or two. Then he has a set shot ( close your eyes and hope ) or can't swallow the ground ball opportunities he used to nail regularly enough.

Dizz was our steadiest player in the forward line today. Cam ,well you never know when he's going to turn up. Hipwood has been tearing it up until we decided to ruck him which took a lot of the sting out of his game . And Morris as usual looks outstanding in patches but like all young forwards can drift out of the game. Geez we miss Joe.

When you see our M/F get spanked in clearances it makes it hard for the forwards. But there's no doubt some of them are struggling at present.

 

[braddsey]

Must admit his body language walking off at 3QT still in his sub shirt didn’t look great. Assumed it was just because he wanted to be out there by then, and maybe it was, but if he has looked like that all year it wouldn’t surprise me if he pulls up stumps and heads back home at the end of the year.

In his defence, i can’t imagine any sub is exactly happy about walking off at 3QT still in the sub-vest. I’m sure like every player on the fringe he just wants a position in the starting 22.

 

[martinson]

In his defence, i can’t imagine any sub is exactly happy about walking off at 3QT still in the sub-vest. I’m sure like every player on the fringe he just wants a position in the starting 22.

He just wanted to get out there.

I'm actually looking forward to the Hawthorn game.

Should answer a lot of questions and gives us the opportunity to serve it right up to them and be the underdog for a change. Because I'm sure the media and most others will be expecting them to give us the runaround.

 

[LionsMaw]

because I have trust in this group that have won a significant amount more games than any other club the last 6 and a half years, I have trust that they turned it around last year when most thought they couldn't, your question how can I be so certain? how can you be certain it wont

How can I be certain it won't?
Well watching the last 10 wks, I'm not CERTAIN it won't but I'm not hugely filled with confidence atm either. Playing poorly against 17th & 14th does not scream "reigning premier looking certain to get that b2b flag"

 

[lions2010]

I can’t understand why none of our forwards want to lead at the ball. On so many occasions you see someone streaming through the centre looking for an option to kick to and all our forwards seem to want to get an easy goal out the back or take a screamer over the top. It is so predictable and the opposition teams all know it.

It is because our team was obsessed with kicking down to Gawn, so there was no opportunity to lead for the ball

100% agree. McCluggage needs to lift in that area too and there was zero forward pressure from Lohmann and Cameron and very little from Rayner.

We need to evolve the team. The 2024 playbook without Daniher will not work, we are the hunted this year and need to develop our gameplan.

Time to bring in Doedee for Ainsworth.
Good first up game for Coleman
Put Fletch back on wing.
Bring in Marshall for McKenna, we need more natural run.
Big O & Fort

Watch Collingwood atm and you know what you will get. Just so even across the ground and team orientated. And the focus is there from start to finish. Ready to go and fair dinkum every week.

Conversely we have a soft touch about us this year. We seem to waltz into games thinking we can flick the switch and win. That’s arrogance. Each week is a new opposition and they need to be respected or else you get what you deserve.

For a top 8 team we are far too easy to score against and we have lost the ability to score consistently high scores to mask that. Melbourne putting 90 plus against us is quite frankly embarrassing. Borderline one of the worst forward lines in the competition.

Issue is the Lions have a non-functional forward line that has very little structure and is badly out of form (charlie dropping easy marks and Lohmann non existant). There is no pressure and lockin within the forward half and the opposition is easily getting us on transition for easy scores.

I would persist with Hipwood as the 2nd ruck option, I thought he was OK in the contest but needs to develop further, but bring in Gallop for forward half structure. This will help our smalls be more dynamic and play their role by bringing the ball to the ground.

To me, its pretty obvious.

 

[Coastal Lion]

I was thinking his focus was shifting more to horse racing

100%

 

[Grasshopper17]

Did it look like it was there this time last year?

Let's not overreact too much just yet. We've banked early wind and are in a slump. We will work our way out of it if we're good enough. History says we are.

To be fair, this time last year we'd just won by 20 goals so, yeah, it did

 

[Grasshopper17]

Yeah Will’s lack of defensive running was really obvious at the game tonight. He’s a young player so I don’t want to go to hard on him, but it’s something he really needs to work on especially when you see his enthusiasm to run the other way.

Yep there's a real need right now to get back to the basics. Our fundamentals. What we served up today is how footy looks when you want the infinity pool on the roof but you can't be bothered laying down that dirty great block of concrete on the ground first.

 

[Grasshopper17]

So many lazy players today, AhChee, Lohmann, Rayner, Cameron and Andrews the worst.
Lohmann should have been subbed out at 3/4 time, waiting until the last 10 minutes was insanity.
Pretty embarrassing when a 36 year old Zorko is the only player willing and able to run out the full 100 minutes. And such dumb football kicking it to Gawn time after time, pathetic to watch.

Yes, it was an interesting (read: bad) decision to swap Andrews with Gardiner. The solution to the fact that Melksham was beating Andrews was to stop the ball getting in there in the first place, not to shift Andrews into attack.

Point I'm trying to make is that had Andrews been in Dizzy's position when he went long to Gawn late in the game, Andrews would absolutely have switched instead, or taken the game on in some other way. It might not have worked of course, but he would have done something else in an attempt to win the game.

I felt a bit for Dizzy tho in those moments; he'd hardly played in our backline since 2023, when kicking to Gawn was EXACTLY what we used to do!

Also Andrews looked like a fish out of water in our forward line and actually brought May into the game after he'd been almost unsighted all day. The move cruelled us at both ends unfortunately.

Not the greatest day for our players or our coaches.

 

[GOTHELIONS16]

Judging by this thread, the sky is falling.

Settle down peeps, we’re 7-1-2, remember what Chris Fagan says,

‘A win is never as good as it seems and a loss is never as bad as it seems.’

A win in May doesn’t count for much. Hang in there, ride the rough patch and we’ll be better for it.

Fagan knows what it takes to go back to back.

Starcevic, Doedee to sure up defence. And Coleman will only get better. Keep the faith you lot.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Will's biggest problem imo is he wins ball dishes off and calls for a hand pass back that 7 times out of 10 he is under pressure and dumps its inside fifty it hurts us alot as he has out worked his man and when it turns over his opponent is ahead of him and he doesn't have the pace to then cover who has left there guy to cover his.
I love the kid but sometimes it's clear to see what will happen before it does...if that makes sense.

He is one of several players we have who desperately need to spend (a lot of) time developing their non-preferred foot.

Yes, they are often able to fashion a kick on the outside of their right foot. But these kicks generally result in turnovers. Bad turnovers, in places on the field where we get punished on the rebound.

If it was good enough for Simon Black, it's good enough for these guys.

 

[Grasshopper17]

I can’t understand why none of our forwards want to lead at the ball. On so many occasions you see someone streaming through the centre looking for an option to kick to and all our forwards seem to want to get an easy goal out the back or take a screamer over the top. It is so predictable and the opposition teams all know it.

I observed this a few times today at the ground. It's because we were initially positioned so high up the ground. Essentially this is defensive positioning, as you're forming the front part of your full-ground defensive press. Thus, when you do win possession, running back towards goal is the only direction the forwards can possibly go. Ideally they eventually bend their leads back towards the ball carrier, similar to a wide receiver in NFL, but this may not always be possible in the time available.

The opposite of this is "lengthening" the field. This is a phrase which has wormed its way into the footy vernacular over the last 12 months or so. It's where you have one of more forwards hold as deep as reasonably possible, opening up space for your midfield to move the ball when they win possession. The flipside of this is that if you lose possession, it's very hard to defend for the same reason: the field is very open.

I must admit, my default setting is I would love to see us lengthen the field as much as we possibly can. Kicking accurately to forwards who are running back towards goal is incredibly difficult at the best of times, you have to be pinpoint, and given the difficulty we had even hitting basic targets going inside 50 today, it was a recipe for disaster. If we can hold one or more forwards as deep as possible, it's much easier for them to lead back towards or across the vision of the ball carrier, making them a much easier target to hit.

But I'm starting to understand the rationale behind when we should lengthen vs when we shouldn't. And given we have been trying to work on our team defence in recent weeks, I guess this was the rationale. But we conceded 99 anyway, 114 on expected score, so we might as well just go forth and lengthen with gay abandon, and just turn games into shootouts if we aren't gonna defend anyway

 

[Grasshopper17]

What's the go with Andrews taking Melksham ?

I reckon it was more Melksham taking Andrews. And then taking him to the cleaners.

 

[Grasshopper17]

To take some positives out of the game Bailey is back as a gun and will be better still if we can feed him a bit more. Gotta give credit to Dizz , his experience showed on a few occasions where he made good decisions .

Hipwood's been a target who generally delivered so far this year but rucking is definitely not for him and it took away his potency in attack which we missed.

I'm a little underwhelmed that the 2 guys who really tried to get us going were Lester and Zorko. You can add Fletcher to those 2 I guess. I know most things emanate from the midfield but our small forwards bar Bailey when he was in there were crap today. Charlie has become a very frustrating player.

I must admit Hipwood was better than I expected at centre bounces today. He was unpredictable to his opponent and then I liked his follow up at ground level.

Your argument about taking him out of the forward line and perhaps over-working him as a result is a different issue and perhaps well-founded.

 

[Grasshopper17]

I do like Fagan's reaction in the Press conference, we need a bit of head banging now or we will loose 4 or 5 in a row.

Where did you see this press conference? I can't find it on the AFL app.

 

[Elixuh]

I can’t find grandpa Fages presser? Did he finally lose it in his presser and it can’t be published due to the number of expletives?

 

[mpal6]

I reckon it was more Melksham taking Andrews. And then taking him to the cleaners.

Andrews played too loose on him and Melksham treated him like a step ladder and wound him up in the process.

Edit: I wonder why sometimes we just accept that matchup and live with it. We could've forced Lester or Wilmot to scrag Melksham and force a change of matchup. Andrews is a big boy but when it's clearly not helping his game and affecting our structure - we should've done something about that matchup itself.

 

[mpal6]

I can’t find grandpa Fages presser? Did he finally lose it in his presser and it can’t be published due to the number of expletives?

Yeah I've been searching for it since last night. Not up on Lions site either.

 

[Nathan Barley]

I must admit Hipwood was better than I expected at centre bounces today. He was unpredictable to his opponent and then I liked his follow up at ground level.

Your argument about taking him out of the forward line and perhaps over-working him as a result is a different issue and perhaps well-founded.

I thought he ended up on the ground as most centre bounces against some VFL hack

 

[Coastal Lion]

Andrews played too loose on him and Melksham treated him like a step ladder and wound him up in the process.

Edit: I wonder why sometimes we just accept that matchup and live with it. We could've forced Lester or Wilmot to scrag Melksham and force a change of matchup. Andrews is a big boy but when it's clearly not helping his game and affecting our structure - we should've done something about that matchup itself.

Melksham was talking smack and taunting Harris throughout the match.
I thought Fages moved Harris because of it he was clearly inside his head and the way Harris reacted to it was very immature imo he was getting whipped and didn't like it the vision is there watch the reply.
Grow up and ignore that shyte don't react to it i say.

 

[Dalions]

Andrews played too loose on him and Melksham treated him like a step ladder and wound him up in the process.

Edit: I wonder why sometimes we just accept that matchup and live with it. We could've forced Lester or Wilmot to scrag Melksham and force a change of matchup. Andrews is a big boy but when it's clearly not helping his game and affecting our structure - we should've done something about that matchup itself.

Exactly, we have let teams dictate this match up before, it’s a strange one as to why we just let it happen.

 

[M Malice]

Melksham was talking smack and taunting Harris throughout the match.
I thought Fages moved Harris because of it he was clearly inside his head and the way Harris reacted to it was very immature imo he was getting whipped and didn't like it the vision is there watch the reply.
Grow up and ignore that shyte don't react to it i say.

Along with the subconscious arrogance, which IMO we have touch of... maybe also a touch of entitlement ie. how dare you think you are as good as us.

I am sure GF victories can fuel such sentiments, winning from almost impossible positions away in big finals in 2024 would have added to the internal thought that yer we got this, no lead is too big for us to reel in.

I am confident the players, Fagan and co can turn us into that exceptional team again, still plenty of time. Time to move on from dancing on thin ice, we need a 2025 mantra.

 

[Bucking Beads]

This loss was always coming with the way we have been playing this season. Very disappointing but a good opportunity to learn from it. The worry is how we got torched so often when ever the ball hit the deck. The Dees just killed us in this area.
Gardiner was more than serviceable up forward but squeezing him into the side every week throws the balance of our side up IMO. Andrews and Payne couldn't have played worse TBH. Absolute shockers from them. I'd love to see Neales clearance numbers because they have to be down from previous years.

 

[Grasshopper17]

Edit: I wonder why sometimes we just accept that matchup and live with it. We could've forced Lester or Wilmot to scrag Melksham and force a change of matchup. Andrews is a big boy but when it's clearly not helping his game and affecting our structure - we should've done something about that matchup itself.

Do you remember our match with GWS at the Gabba last year?