Lions Serve Notice: This Is What Two Flags Looks Like

If you needed a reminder of why this Brisbane side has back-to-back flags sitting in the cabinet, Saturday arvo at the Gabba did the job in about eight minutes flat. The Lions didn’t just beat Hawthorn, they dismantled them, and every other club with premiership aspirations should’ve been taking notes.

This wasn’t a scrappy four-point arm wrestle where you scrounge the four points and move on. This was a statement. A proper, no-doubt-about-it, everyone-watching-at-home-including-the-other-fifteen-coaches statement. And honestly? No notes from me.

The start set the tone for everything

Hawthorn have been one of the form sides of the competition this year, genuinely dangerous, full of run, and coached by someone who’s got them believing they can go toe to toe with anyone. So when Brisbane came out and just absolutely buried them in the opening term, it meant something different to a normal good quarter.

The Lions were first to every contest, won the clearance battle in a canter and made Hawthorn look like they’d turned up to the wrong ground. By the first break the margin already told the story, and from there it was about how ruthless Brisbane wanted to be rather than whether they’d win.

That’s the mark of a genuinely elite team. Good sides find a way to win close ones. Great sides, the ones that go back-to-back, have games like this where they just flip a switch and put a contender to the sword inside a quarter.

The midfield brigade was legit unfair

I’ve said it all season and I’ll keep saying it: Brisbane’s midfield group is the best in the comp when it’s fully fit and firing, and Saturday was exhibit A. The clearance work, the pressure around the ball, the way they won it and then hit targets going forward instead of just clunking it up for the sake of it — that’s premiership football.

Hawthorn’s mids are no slouches either, which is what made it so eye-catching. Brisbane didn’t win that battle by accident or because the Hawks had an off day. They won it because their engine room is stacked with players who’ve been through grand finals, who know exactly what finals-quality pressure looks like, and who bring it in Round footy like it’s September.

That experience gap showed up everywhere. Every fifty-fifty ball, every hard ball get, every contested mark inside 50 — Brisbane just had more conviction. You could see it in body language alone.

Forward line finally clicking on all cylinders

The bit that should really worry the rest of the competition is that Brisbane’s forward line looked genuinely scary again. When it’s humming, with multiple avenues to goal and blokes who can hurt you both overhead and at ground level, it’s about as complete a forward set-up as there is in the AFL.

Hawthorn’s defenders, who’ve actually been pretty reliable this year, just had no answers. No system was going to fix that when the supply coming inside 50 was that clean and that relentless. Good defence starts to look average pretty quickly when the opposition midfield is delivering it on a platter every second phase of play.

That’s the scary part for whoever draws Brisbane in September. It’s not just one setup that beats you, it’s multiple. Structures up top, third-man-up craft at ground level, and pure class overhead. Pick your poison.

Hawks weren’t disgraced, Brisbane were just next level

Now look, I want to be fair here because Hawthorn have had a genuinely good season and this result doesn’t undo that. They’ll be filthy with themselves and their coach will have plenty to work through this week, but this wasn’t a case of a bad team getting found out. It was a good team running into a great one on the wrong day, at the wrong venue, against a side with a point to prove.

The Gabba factor is real too, and I’m not just saying that as a Lions supporter who’s biased as anything. Interstate sides coming up to Brisbane in the heat and humidity, into a ground where the home crowd is finally showing up in genuine numbers, know exactly how hard that challenge is. It’s become one of the genuine fortress venues in the competition again, and that matters when it comes to finals seeding.

What this actually means for the rest of the year

The obvious temptation after a performance like this is to crown Brisbane again before a ball’s even bounced in September. I get it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves completely — this comp has shown time and again that form in the middle rounds doesn’t always translate perfectly to finals footy. Injuries happen, form dips happen, umpiring calls swing games.

But what this result does tell you is that when Brisbane are fully switched on, fully fit, and playing with intent from the first bounce, there genuinely isn’t a side in the competition that matches up with them structurally. That’s not homer talk, that’s just what the scoreboard and the vision showed on Saturday.

For the rest of the comp, the message is pretty simple: the benchmark hasn’t moved, it’s actually gone up. Two flags in a row doesn’t happen by accident, and performances like this are exactly why. The Lions aren’t just defending premierships anymore, they’re building a genuine dynasty conversation, and Saturday at the Gabba was another brick in that wall.

Don’t sleep on the growth story either

One thing I’ll always bang on about is what this does for footy in Queensland more broadly. A packed, loud Gabba for a home dismantling of a rival like Hawthorn is exactly the kind of scene that grows the game up here, at AFL and AFLW level both. Kids in the stands watching that midfield brigade work is worth more to the sport long-term than any marketing campaign the league could dream up.

So yeah, ominous warning sent. Rivals can study the tape all they like, but until someone actually matches Brisbane’s intensity for four quarters, this is going to keep happening.