Queensland talent add pride to the Brisbane Lions
Brisbane’s premiership dynasty contained a strong Queensland flavour and that maroon theme is continuing with these current-day Lions.
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They are the pride of Brisbane town who put the maroon in the “maroon, blue and gold’’.
While Brisbane Lions sides have always featured a smattering of locals, the great ones have been headlined by Queenslanders.
Dayne Zorko, Charlie Cameron, Harris Andrews and Eric Hipwood represent the captain and vice-captain, three All Australians and the top two leading goalkickers for the past three seasons – not to mention Zorko’s stranglehold on the last four Merret-Murray medals.
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It is a maroon theme the side shares with the mighty Brisbane teams of the premiership era, who also boasted a large contingent of players who were either born or raised in Queensland.
And they weren’t the supporting cast either.
Captain Michael Voss and gun midfielder Jason Akermanis were Brownlow medallists.
Even the third winner of football’s greatest individual honour, Simon Black, was Queensland born, although he reverses the trend by considering himself a West Australian having moved there as a young child.
Three-hundred gamer Marcus Ashcroft, “Mr September” Clark Keating and fullback Mal Michael were all triple premiership players, while Robbie Copeland won two and Jamie Charman one.
With the days of access zones a thing of the past, the Lions and Suns academies are the only way to ensure that Queensland flavour remains strong in our AFL sides.
Graeme Downie, the chairman of the Lions through their extraordinary run of premierships between 2001-03, said while it had always been a source of great pride to see Queenslanders performing well on the national stage, it was extra special when they played their footy in their home town.
“I grew up in Queensland and always believed we had great local talent,’’ he said.
“We’ve got two All Australians this year and our captain, it’s pretty impressive.
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“Going back to (Jason) Dunstall and (Scott) McIvor, there were always good players here and for local followers it was always important to have our boys in the side.
“Even in that champion team, some of those boys may have been born elsewhere but they came here as young kids, did their schooling here and we took a lot of pride in calling them Queenslanders.’’
Downie was at the helm when the Lions began to push for an academy system to bolster their player retention record.
“The big problem we always had, and have always had, was the go home factor which is partially alleviated by having locals in the side,’’ Downie said.
Zorko had a footy in his hand as soon as he could walk and was a mainstay of junior rep teams, but Andrews, Hipwood and Cameron all owe their AFL careers to the time they spent in the Lions academy.
Andrews arrived in Queensland as a young boy and aside from a brief and ill-fated flirtation with rugby, stuck with the game he inherited his passion for from his Victorian father.
It wasn’t until he was invited to the academy at age 17 that he suddenly rocketed into draft discussions.
“I played a little bit of rugby at school. I was shocking – couldn’t run, couldn’t tackle – so I gave up pretty quickly,’’ he said.
“As a footy club, the more talent we have coming through Queensland and Brisbane the better.
“For guys like myself, if there wasn’t an academy there, I’d be still playing at Aspley and not playing AFL footy.’’
Hipwood and Cameron were opposite. Their interests lay in other sports and were invited to the academy under the Lions’ aggressive drive to lure the best athletes to our game.
“The academy attracted us all to the sport. I wasn’t as interested in the AFL at that time and it attracted me to the sport,’’ Hipwood said.
“I played anything and everything, I loved playing sport.”
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