Lions, We Need to Talk About What’s Going Wrong

Sunday hurt. Not in the dramatic, last-second-behind kind of way that leaves you gutted but somehow still proud — it hurt in the quiet, unsettling way where you sit on your couch at full time and genuinely wonder what you just watched. The Brisbane Lions, reigning premiers of this competition, were taken apart by a GWS Giants side that looked like they’d found something they lost years ago.

And the scariest part? The Giants weren’t even at their ceiling. Not close.

GWS Turned Up Like It Was 2016 All Over Again

There was a period in the mid-to-late 2010s when the Giants were genuinely terrifying. Young, athletic, running hard from everywhere, playing a brand of footy that felt like it was from the future. Sunday’s third quarter at Engie Stadium had that exact same energy, and it was legit one of the most complete quarter-hours of football I’ve seen a team play this season.

Adam Kingsley didn’t need to go full Krakatoa at half-time — his side had actually been competitive in the first half, pushing the Lions and making the contest uncomfortable. But whatever he said in that rooms at the main break, it worked like rocket fuel. The Giants came out in the third and played something close to perfect football. Crisp inside 50 entries, contested ball dominance, pressure that just never let Brisbane breathe. It was a flawless training-drill kind of quarter — the sort where you keep waiting for the opposition to respond and they just… can’t.

Toby Greene looked hungry. Lachie Whitfield was classy. The midfield brigade was running over the top of the Lions like they had an extra player on the ground. When GWS get that momentum rolling downhill, they are a seriously scary football club, and right now they look like genuine September contenders again.

Brisbane’s Issues Are More Than Just One Bad Day

Okay, so here’s the thing I keep trying to tell myself: every team drops one. Every premiership side has a game mid-season where nothing clicks and you look at the scoreboard and think, how? But what worries me about this Lions performance is that it doesn’t feel like an isolated bad day. It feels like the third or fourth data point in a trend that’s becoming harder to ignore.

The Lions have looked flat in patches across multiple rounds now. There’s a heaviness to their play sometimes — like they’re trying to remember how to be brilliant rather than just being brilliant. Last year’s premiership team had this freewheeling confidence about them, an almost arrogant belief that they could turn any game around. Right now, when the momentum swings against them, they’re not finding that gear.

And Brisbane’s midfield, which was arguably the best in the competition for long stretches of 2023 and 2024, is not winning the contested battle consistently enough. Lachie Neale is still putting in the hard yards, but the Lions need more bodies around him working at that same level week after week. When GWS’s engine room gets on top, Brisbane didn’t have the answers on Sunday, and that is a genuine concern.

The Selection Puzzle Chris Fagan Has to Solve

Look, Chris Fagan is one of the best coaches in the competition — that’s not up for debate. The man has built Brisbane into a perennial contender from scratch and won a flag. I’m not here to sack him off after one rough patch. But there are some selection and structure questions that feel like they need answering sooner rather than later.

The Lions’ forward line setup has looked a little disjointed at times. Joe Daniher, when he’s right, is one of the most damaging big forwards in the game. But Brisbane need multiple avenues to goal, and on Sunday they couldn’t find them consistently. The ball was going inside 50, but the conversion — and the repeat-effort pressure that the Giants were bringing — just wasn’t there.

Fagan will be honest about it. He always is. But the Lions need to find their solutions quickly, because the ladder doesn’t wait, and there are a lot of very good teams sniffing around the top eight right now.

Where Are All the Signs Pointing For Brisbane?

I want to be careful here, because catastrophising mid-season is a trap I’ve fallen into before as a Lions fan (2022 semi-final still lives rent free in my head, thanks). But the signs that all is not well at the Lions right now are legit hard to dismiss. Here’s what I’m seeing:

• Defensive structure breaking down at key moments, allowing oppositions to go on extended runs
• Contested possession numbers that are well below where they were during the premiership run
• A lack of scoreboard pressure and difficulty converting inside 50 entries into scoring chances
• Body language on the ground during adversity that looks a little too passive — where’s that mongrel edge?

None of those things are unfixable. None of them mean Brisbane are suddenly a bad football team. But they are the kind of structural problems that, if left unaddressed, become habits. And habits in football are very hard to break once September arrives and the pressure ratchets up to eleven.

The GWS Rivalry Is Real and the Giants Want Blood

One thing I think is worth acknowledging is that GWS always seem to raise it against Brisbane. There’s a genuine rivalry there, and the Giants clearly have the Lions marked in their calendar. Kingsley’s side have been building toward this kind of performance and Sunday felt like a statement — not just to Brisbane, but to the rest of the competition. We’re back. Take us seriously.

And you know what? Good for them. The competition is better when GWS are playing like this. The atmosphere at Engie Stadium, the energy in their forward press, the belief running through their whole list — that’s what footy looks like when a club is cooking. I can admire it even while it absolutely ruins my Sunday.

What the Lions Have to Do Right Now

Brisbane can not afford to let this become a longer slump. The mid-season bye can be a blessing or a curse depending on how a club uses it, and the Lions need to treat it like an intervention — honest, clear-eyed and focussed on getting back to basics. The things that made them premiers: relentless pressure, contested clearance work, clean ball movement out of the back half, and forwards who hunt in packs.

They also need their best players to recapture their best form. Neale, Daniher, Dayne Zorko — when those three are at peak level simultaneously, Brisbane are almost unbeatable. Getting all cylinders firing at once is the challenge, and Fagan and his assistants have enough games of tape now to know exactly where the leaks are.

I still believe in this list. I still believe in this coach. But I’m not going to pretend Sunday was anything other than a wake-up call. The Giants gave the Lions a serious examination, and Brisbane failed it pretty convincingly. The good news is that there’s still time to turn it around before the finals race gets truly cutthroat.

The bad news? Every other contender just watched that game too, and they’ll have been taking notes.

Sort it out, Lions. Please. My Sunday arvo’s can not keep looking like this.