Same Old Story: Lions Get Comfy, Swans Make Them Pay

Look, we all saw this coming and somehow we still didn’t see it coming, which is the most Brisbane Lions thing that could possibly happen. Chris Fagan spent the whole week telling anyone who’d listen that Sydney weren’t to be taken lightly, and his own players went out and took them lightly anyway.

This is legit becoming a pattern now. Every time this Lions group gets a run of good form and a favourable ladder position, something in the collective brain switches off. It happened last September in patches, it’s happened at various points this year, and it happened again on Saturday night against a Swans outfit that had its chairman publicly say the season was torpedoed just a few weeks back. That’s not a dig at Sydney, by the way — that’s context for how little regard some pundits, and clearly some of our players, had for what they’d bring to a final.

Fagan’s warnings fell on deaf ears

You could see it building in the build-up. Fagan wasn’t just doing media duty when he talked up the danger of an undercooked Sydney side — he genuinely meant it, because he knows this list better than anyone. He knows when they’re switched on and dangerous, and he knows when they think the job’s already done because the name on the jumper says ‘minor premiers’ or ‘reigning premiers’ or whatever tag we’re carrying round at the time.

The trouble is, knowing your players are vulnerable to complacency and actually stopping it from happening are two very different things. You can’t inject urgency into blokes who’ve just spent five months being told how good they are. Fagan can preach all he wants in the coach’s box, but once the siren goes it’s on the players to bring it, and for large chunks of Saturday night, Brisbane just didn’t.

Sydney’s spirit was the real story

Can we talk about the Swans for a second, because no notes on their attitude. This is a club that’s had a genuinely rough trot — list turnover, a coach under scrutiny, a chairman basically waving the white flag on the season in public. And instead of packing it in, they rocked up to a qualifying final against the form team of the competition and played with actual desperation.

That’s the bit that should worry Lions fans more than any individual passage of play. It’s one thing to lose a contest of skill. It’s another thing entirely to get beaten on want. Sydney looked like a team that had nothing to lose and everything to prove, and that combination is dangerous in finals footy every single year. Brisbane, by contrast, looked like a team that assumed the form line from the last ten weeks would just carry over automatically. It doesn’t work like that. Never has.

The warning signs were already there

If you’d been watching closely through August, this wasn’t exactly a bolt from the blue. There were quarters — even full halves — where Brisbane’s intensity dropped off a cliff against sides they were expected to beat comfortably. They got the four points more often than not because the talent gap is real, but the connection between effort and result was starting to look a bit shaky even before finals arrived.

That’s the complacency question in a nutshell. When you’ve got as much midfield grunt and forward-line firepower as this Lions side, you can get away with an off night against most of the competition. You cannot get away with it in September, against a team playing with genuine desperation, in a final that actually means something on the ladder.

What this means for the double chance

The good news, if you’re looking for it, is that this was a qualifying final, not an elimination final. The double chance is still very much alive and Brisbane get another crack the following week. Fagan will be filthy, but he’ll also know that a wake-up call like this, delivered in week one of finals rather than a straight knockout, is about the best version of a bad result you can get.

• Brisbane still control their own destiny with the double chance intact
• The midfield brigade needs a genuine review of intensity levels, not just tactics
• Sydney have shown every side left in the finals they’ll be an absolute nuisance

But there’s a version of this where Brisbane brush it off as a one-off blip, and I reckon that would be the wrong read. This side has shown across the year that switching off is basically baked into how they play when the opposition is underestimated. The challenge for Fagan this week isn’t just tactical, it’s cultural. He needs his best players to actually respect every team they line up against, not just say the right things about respect in a press conference.

Why this Lions group can still find another gear

Here’s the thing though — I’m not panicking, and Lions fans shouldn’t be panicking either. This list has been through enough finals disappointment now to know what real urgency looks like when it’s forced upon them. The best version of this team, the one we saw claim the flag last year, doesn’t need a near-death experience to find that extra gear, but if it takes one, they’ve proven before they can find it.

The concerning part isn’t the loss itself, it’s the pattern behind it. Complacency has cropped up too many times this season for it to be a coincidence, and if it shows up again against whoever they draw in a preliminary final, that’s a genuinely serious problem heading into a granny. Fagan’s words this week need to actually land this time, because the margin for error just got a whole lot smaller.

Sydney deserve every bit of credit for the spirit they showed with their season supposedly cooked. But this column’s about the Lions, and the honest take is this: the talent is still there, the flag credentials are still there, but the complaceny that’s crept in all year finally got exposed on the big stage. Fix that, and Brisbane are still the team to beat. Don’t, and September’s going to be a lot bumpier than it needs to be.