Chris Fagan reveals regrets and learnings from 2023 GF, how Brisbane roared back into flag mix
It wasn’t a grand final hangover, but Chris Fagan knew something had to change at Brisbane in the middle of the season. It was time to dance. Fagan goes one-on-one with JAY CLARK.
Lions
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Brisbane Lions have been wearing dance shoes since mid-year.
When things hit the fan after a patchy 4-6 start, Lions’ senior coach Chris Fagan called a meeting of his player leaders to acknowledge their predicament and the various stresses on the club.
They had five season-ending ACL injuries, one of the club’s most popular staff members, Nicole Duncan, passed away, and on the field their conversion rate in the forward half fell off a cliff.
And when the Lions nosedived against Hawthorn in Round 11, kicking 10.15 to the Hawks’ 15.10, the club and its coach were officially in the gun after falling to 13th spot.
Sticking with a Leigh Matthews mantra that the coach “always has to be the calmest person in the joint”, Fagan tabled all the issues the Lions were facing in a candid Monday meeting with his troops in late May.
Collectively, they doubled down on their game plan after a thorough analysis, and slapped a new message up on the wall to help reignite their season on the back of the mid-season bye.
It was time to dance, the senior coach said.
“There is an old saying, that if you are walking on thin ice you may as well dance,” Fagan said.
“I put it up on the board and I said, ‘What do you reckon this means, boys?’
“We had a bit of chat about it and I said ‘If we are going to go down this year, we have got to go down giving it everything and, having some fun.
“We had an open conversation about the pressure we were under as a footy club and what that (pressure) felt like for them and what it felt like for me.
“I said ‘Don’t let it get to you.’
“We’ve got to enjoy each other’s company and play with our brotherhood trademark and they embraced that idea, and it still gets talked about.
“We said ‘We may as well dance’, and we have been on that theme ever since.”
On Saturday night, Fagan’s men will take on a wounded Carlton in a cutthroat elimination final at the Gabba aiming to take the long route to the premiership like the Western Bulldogs in 2016.
And at some point this week, the proud Tasmanian may return to the time capsule.
That is where all the Lions put the heart-wrenching messages of learning and regret they wrote themselves after last year’s nailbiting Grand Final loss to Collingwood.
That was the day when Collingwood superstars Nick Daicos and Jordan De Goey, and then veteran Steele Sidebottom, combined to kick two of the most brilliant goals of their careers to break Brisbane hearts at the MCG.
Fagan, 63, has his own regrets that day.
Things he would do differently which hit him as soon as his eyes opened every morning over summer.
“It took me months,” he said.
“The first thing I thought about every day was something about the grand final. You always wonder.
“You always think about things you would do differently if you had your time over.
“I think I should have … well, as it turned out Bobby Hill was the difference and I should have put more time into him.
“He had been their igniter quite a number of times during the year.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t respect him, it was just that I backed in our guys to get the job done, but if I had my time over again I would have gone a little harder in that department.”
Hill claimed the Norm Smith Medal, booting four brilliant goals under bright sunshine.
Every Brisbane player had their moments in the big one, and in the days after the grand final loss, they wrote them down, and locked them away in the footy vault.
It was not to belittle or denigrate anyone, but to emphasise how they could grow, and capitalise next time.
If they got their chance again, what would they want to do differently? What did they learn?
“We tried to deal with it positively in the sense that we looked at the grand final and tried to take the learnings from it in the hope we could get back there again,” he said.
“We talked about our regrets because I wanted to get it out there on the table and the players were really honest.
“They talked about moments they had that they would like to take back.
“They’ve even been written down and we’ve got them in a time capsule, so we might pull them back out.
“It was never about retribution or making somebody feel bad about what happened, it was always about what can we learn from it?
“How do we get better? What can make us stronger next time?
“Grand finals are hard. Games are full of mistakes, and when you lose by four points – that is a bounce of the ball.
“We didn’t play bad, and if I’m honest I didn’t think Steele Sidebottom would kick that goal. There can only be one winner and we weren’t it.”
In their season-opener against Carlton this year, the Lions blazed out to a 46-point lead in the second term before Patrick Cripps’ men reeled them in to pinch a thrilling one-point win at the Gabba.
For the next two-and-a-bit months the Lions, who were a popular pre-season premiership tip, spluttered and stalled.
But Fagan, who consulted the players, senior bosses and some astute judges outside the club as part of their mid-season reassessment, opted for the carrot rather than the stick with his men.
They hired a skills coach, Stuart Dew, and drilled down on the goal kicking in a bid to maximise their chances inside 50m.
“We did a lot more on that, probably more than we should have, just to try and get that right,” he said. “We wouldn’t shy away from what was hurting us.”
But was the slow start part of a grand final hangover or not? Collingwood also started 0-3 and missed the finals after last year’s flag.
It’s a tough mountain to climb the second time.
“There is a physical and there is an emotional drain,” Fagan said.
“The narrative was we were (hungover), but the truth was the numbers suggested we just weren’t converting our opportunities by missing goals or dropping marks inside 50m.
“I believe in telling the truth and the numbers don’t lie.
“All the KPIs suggested we should have been doing better than what we were, so I stuck with it (game plan).
“It’s not like you can stand in front of the group of players and make up bull--- to try and keep their confidence up.
“I could have gone the stick, but I didn’t think it (the problem) was effort.”
The defining moment came the following week against Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium in Round 13 after Fagan’s frank player meeting.
Led by Lachie Neale (38 disposals) and Eric Hipwood (six goals), the Lions destroyed the Dogs by 43 points, sparking a nine-game winning streak which resurrected the club’s premiership credentials.
In that stretch, game breaking goal kicker Cameron Rayner produced the best football of his career and Neale re-emerged as a leading chance to win his third Brownlow Medal.
Former Dog Josh Dunkley solidified his reputation as one of the most selfless on-ballers in the game and the young players who otherwise might not have been given a go stood up in the absence of the knee victims.
It included some significant experimentation down back with spearhead Hipwood swung into defence when Harris Andrews joined four other key defenders on the sidelines.
It got desperate down back at times, but the Lions secured their spot in the eight for the sixth year in a row at the end of one of the tightest and most unpredictable seasons in recent memory.
And it was Fagan’s most challenging at Brisbane, as critics took aim at his game style and strategy late in matches, including the round 23 fade-out against Collingwood.
But the senior coach was unmoved.
“Whatever comes my way I will cop. Even if you don’t listen or read it, everyone tells you anyway, so you can’t exactly hide from it,” he said.
“In sport you can go through bad patches and we have seen it this year. ‘Bevo’ (Western Bulldogs’ coach Luke Beveridge) has been whacked, ‘Kenny’ (Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley) has been whacked, it just happens.
“You have just got to go to work every day and get your energy working with the players.
“It was a good collective effort to keep our nerve and fortunately things got going for us.
“I’ve always been an optimist and I tend to talk about my players’ strengths rather than what they might not be so good at.
“If you do that (talk negatively), they can withdraw and become insular and play careful, mistake-free footy and that is not what you want and will never lead to a resurgence in form.
“There are lots of forces trying to bring you down. My job as a coach is to lift them up.
“So that is what we tried to do and we clawed our way back into the season and put ourselves into a position where we could make it back into the finals.”
Fagan said not only were the Lions still capable of beating the top teams, he believed they had shown enormous courage and character fighting back from significant blows in the first half of the season.
It was on show in the backs-to-the-wall win over Gold Coast in Round 8 when the Lions lost four players to injury within two hours.
Defender Brandon Starcevich was a late withdrawal, swingman Darcy Gardiner and goal kicker Lincoln McCarthy suffered devastating ACL injuries and utility Noah Answerth went off with concussion.
That was the night young key forward Logan Morris was called out of the stands to play his second game for the day.
But despite those hardships, what happened in the second half against the Suns was one of the club’s proudest performances in his time, Fagan said, and a win which they still refer back to.
And Fagan said the adversity they have faced this year can help stand them in good stead in September, if they are still prepared to dance.
That is, if they can kick straight.
For Brisbane, it remains the big question.
Over their last three matches, the Lions have kicked 30 goals 49 behinds, ranked last in the competition for goal kicking accuracy.
But the coach is confident that wheel can turn in September.
“No matter what happens, I’m very proud of the club for fighting back because I think a lot of people thought we would just fall away after our start, and we haven’t done that,” he said.
“That shows a lot of character and grit.
“The other great thing about it all is that we have blooded a lot of young blokes, and guys like Logan Morris, Kai Lohmann, Shadeau Brain, Henry Smith, Bruce Revile, Darragh Joyce and Harry Sharp a lot of them have come in and made an impact.
“There’s Jaspa Fletcher, Darcy Wilmot and Will Ashcroft, they are all young men.
“A lot of them would have not played because the blokes doing the job for the last four or five years I was pretty loyal to.
“They have stepped up and it is a credit to them, it is a credit to the coaches and the work they have done with those boys and their development.
“So, we have built real resilience at the footy club. We have faced a crisis and come through it in a way, because it is easier (to falter).
“It teaches you a lesson as a coach because sometimes you can be a little too loyal instead of bringing new blood into the team to keep regenerating.
“New players bring energy, and we want to utilise it and will need to utilise it for whatever lies ahead.
“We are also looking forward to the boys who did get injured coming back into the team next year and bringing their skills and experience.
“What we will have is more depth now.”
Originally published as Chris Fagan reveals regrets and learnings from 2023 GF, how Brisbane roared back into flag mix
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