Brisbane Lions find scoring potential to be among AFL late-season leaders
THE DRILL: SINCE Round 12 only four clubs have averaged 90 points per game. Can you name them? One team is guaranteed to surprise you.
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SINCE Round 12 only four clubs have averaged 90 points per game.
Can you name them?
Adelaide? Yep, that makes sense. The Crows have boasted the game’s most lethal offensive unit for the past two years.
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Sydney? Of course. The Swans have gone 13-2 since Round 6 and are the form team of the competition.
Who else? Essendon? Correct. The finals-bound Bombers have looked potent at their dangerous best and have not kicked fewer than 80 points since Round 10.
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So who is the last club? Premiership hopefuls Geelong or Richmond? Nope. The fearsome Greater Western Sydney? Nope.
Port Adelaide’s at times temperamental but at other times devastating line-up? Nope.
The answer is the Brisbane Lions.
Since the Lions’ bye, new coach Chris Fagan has had his team playing some scintillating football.
In the past 11 weeks the Lions rank No.4 in the AFL for attack and No.1 for scores per inside 50. They are playing damn good, attacking football and, as revealed on The Drill podcast, 11 of their players have taken considerable steps forward in 2017.
Leading the charge is captain Dayne Beams. The Collingwood premiership player’s past five weeks reads 30 disposals and three goals, 41 disposals, 32 disposals and four goals and 33 disposals and three goals.
The exception was one quieter game, against the Western Bulldogs.
Since the bye the Lions have smashed Fremantle and Gold Coast and beaten Essendon and Carlton.
“This year we’ve won a lot more quarters of football and since the bye we’ve been particularly competitive,” Fagan said last week.
“Our points for and against have improved, so all those things that we measure ourselves on are going to be really big growth in the second half of the year.”
Good luck avoiding your first wooden spoon since 1972, North Melbourne. You’re going to need it.
BRISBANE SINCE THE BYE
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