Robbo: Brisbane Lions need to swap team mentality for gang mentality and develop a mean streak
The Brisbane, Geelong, Hawthorn and Richmond premiership eras all have one thing in common: a mean streak. Do the modern Lions have it?
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The Brisbane Lions are a nice team.
They are liked. Coach Chris Fagan is liked. The evolution of this team from when he took over garners enormous respect and admiration. There’s a fondness towards them.
True, they are young and restless after consecutive finals series, including last year’s preliminary final.
But to go to the next level, get over the hump if you will, they need to become the young and the ruthless.
Their evolution, their battle within, is to transform the team mentality into a gang mentality. Because football is not about being liked.
It’s partly about being feared, which is a mindset that can have an opposition six goals down before they’ve played the game.
Fagan was at Hawthorn as Alastair Clarkson’s right-hand man.
He knows what a gang looks like and how it acts and how it thinks and how the mentality is self-fulfilling.
Does he look at his young Lions and see a mirror to the young Hawks?
Sometimes. But not enough.
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In last year’s qualifying final, an element in the build up through the week which became a lightning rod on the night, was Brisbane’s willingness to stand up to the Tigers.
There was verbal and physical and disrespect and Richmond didn’t like it.
The Tigers had won a staggering 15 consecutive games against Brisbane before that night and by the night’s finish, the victory was the best achieved under Fagan.
“I thought the mental strength our group showed, their composure under pressure, their understanding when you play in these big games you’ve got to win them several times, you don’t just win them once, I’m just really proud of what they did,’’ Fagan said in the post-match
Two week later, the Lions played their worst game of the season against Geelong.
The fact they had played one game in roughly four weeks didn’t help – a concept possibly in need of review by the AFL – because, it could be argued, they lost that edge which comes from week-to-week combat.
Rested bodies just might make the mind well-rested, too
Then again, maybe Geelong did a number on them. They’d like to think they are a gang themselves, the Cats.
Whatever the case, Fagan’s challenge to his players and, more to the point, the players’ challenge to the players, is to be more like week one of the finals not week two.
Be the hard-ass, in-your-face Lions and not the alternative.
Fox Footy’s David King said yesterday on superfooty.com.au he didn’t believe the Lions were “nasty enough’’.
“I’m not saying go out and bash people up, but suspensions for great teams aren’t a problem. I don’t know if they’re nasty enough and I hope they haven’t taken on the persona of the coach,’’ King said.
Paul Chapman and Jordan Lewis, two resident ruthless types in their respective ruthless Geelong and Hawthorn premiership teams, both agree the Lions are a nice team.
“And they are a young team,’’ Chapman said
“It is hard for them to find that, you know, that ability to be aggressive every week.
“Doing it the right way is the most important thing.
“You have to learn to play with that gang mentality, as you put it, but also try to control it. But there’s no doubt you need it.’’
Lewis: “It takes a lot of energy … but you’re never too young.
“If you want to become a great team you’ve got to have a little bit of nastiness. You just have to.’’
There is ample evidence: The Kangaroos of the 90s, then Essendon, then Brisbane, Geelong, the Hawks and now Richmond.
“At the end of the day, you look at all these sides and there’s nastiness,’’ Lewis said.
Chappy was a fully-patched gang member.
So was Steve Johnson, Joel Selwood, Cameron Mooney, Darren Milburn and Tom Hawkins.
“For me,’’ Chapman said, “I hated the opposition because it made me play better.’’
Lewis was the same.
“I wouldn’t go to certain venues because I might run into another player. I was quite a friendly player off the field, but I knew if I created a friendship, I suppose, then I couldn’t then be as aggressive towards that player out on the field. That was the mentality. I hated meeting other players outside the game,” he said.
“And you’d make up excuses to hate them as well.’’
Lewis said talent was one part of the premiership paradigm.
“You have to create that aura in terms of how you play and how you hunt and the aggression you serve up,’’ he said,
Chapman and Lewis agreed the growth of the gang mentality starts with the coach, but at its peak is owned by the players.
“Bomber pushed it and as we got older we grasped it and it’s probably why Bomber could sit in the coaches box and eat sandwiches,’’ Chapman said.
It’s part arrogance, part aggression, part aura and part belief which when combined is wholly intimidating.
Lewis said that early in his career and because the Hawks were a poor team, physicality was “the only way we could compete”.
“That was really the only thing Clarko would, not be proud of, but, you know, we didn’t want to be pushed around because for previous years, Hawthorn had been pushed around,” he said.
In his second game for the Hawks, Round 4 of 2005, the Hawks played the three-peat Lions at the MCG.
‘‘That was my and Roughy’s second game and that was our first win,’’ he said.
“I don’t remember the specifics, but that week, I clearly remember going into that game and the theme was ‘we’re not getting pushed around today’.
“And I know I got fined, Buddy got fined, and Roughy got fined. All for wrestling and not getting pushed around.’’
From little things, big, snarling, nasty things grow.
From 2011-16, they were the unsociable Hawks.
Just maybe the win over the Tigers in the qualifying final will be Brisbane’s ‘remember that night’ moment.
And just maybe, Fagan will be even more demanding on his players this year.
In last weekend’s pre-season game, the Suns walloped the Lions in the first half.
At the break, Fagan did not make a single positional change.
He coached mentality over strategy.
It was about turning it around in their heads so they could turn it around on the ground.
His task is to have his players playing with that mentality every week, or near enough.
When that happens, Lewis and Chapman said, the aura within is powerful and its projection on the field intimidating.
“In some games, we had the game won halfway through the second quarter,’’ Chapman said.
Lewis: “Speaking with opposition players after I retired, they said to me, before they ran out they knew they would likely get beaten.’’
Asked how that felt in the team, Lewis said: “You don’t necessarily feel it in the easy games, but you feel it when you go to West Coast for the prelim final, when go to Adelaide or Port Adelaide when they were good, you feel it at its maximum when the stakes are higher.’’
That’s the level they Lions have to get to.
“If you don’t have it yet, you’ve got to look for opportunities throughout the year to showcase it and build on it.’’
Plainly, playing Geelong and Hawthorn through those menacing years was uneasy for the opposition.
The same could be said of Richmond today.
They are disliked as much as Brisbane is liked.
That may change this season.
“There’s two sides in the league, Port and Richmond, and they make you feel a bit uneasy,’’ Lewis said.
“Brisbane doesn’t at the moment.’’
Originally published as Robbo: Brisbane Lions need to swap team mentality for gang mentality and develop a mean streak
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