Brisbane Lions will head to Sydney for more suitable training conditions after damage left by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred

After flooding forced the NRL’s Gold Coast Titans out of their training venue, the AFL reigning premiers have had to leave their Brisbane training base.

The Brisbane Lions have been forced to vacate their training base in the wake of heavy rainfall in Queensland and travelled to Sydney early to find “somewhere” to prepare for their first game of the season.
In the wake of damage left by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which forced the postponement of last Thursday’s opening round clash with Geelong at the Gabba, the reigning premiers will fly to Sydney on Wednesday to train in “more suitable conditions” for Saturday afternoon’s SCG clash.

The Lions have been unable to train at their Springfield base since an intra-club match last Wednesday.

“First and foremost, on behalf of the football club, I hope everyone in Queensland and NSW are safe and well and we are all praying for you,” Brisbane Lions general manager football Danny Daly said on Monday.

“To make sure everyone is safe and sound that’s the first priority for us, the human element of it. Then once that is taken care of you look at the footy side of it and you find a way to just deal with it and get on with it.

Brisbane flooding has forced the Lions south to Sydney. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

“The past week has been very unprecedented and not what we had planned for, but these things do happen from time to time unfortunately. We are just grateful everyone has been able to get through it so far.”

The moves from the Lions comes after NRL team the Gold Coast Titans was also forced to move to Sydney with their training fields under 2m of water.

Daly was adamant preparation would be “spot on” despite the shift and a dry ground still to be found.

“These things happen unfortunately in life, and you just need to be resilient, be calm about it and work your way through it, so I’ve got no doubt our preparation will be spot on leading into our game against Sydney,” he said.

The Brisbane Lions will leave their Gabba training base for Sydney. Picture: Josh Woning

“We have the players back in the club today (Monday) and they will have a bit of a hitout indoors to get themselves up and going again.

“We have been chatting to the AFL today and they have been fantastic through this whole past week in accommodating our needs and everything that we needed to do.

“We will train somewhere tomorrow, whether it is the Gabba or Brighton Homes Arena, which are both pretty waterlogged at the minute as you can imagine.

“We will head to Sydney on Wednesday, then get a training in somewhere on Thursday on a dry ground as preparation for the game on Saturday, so we are just working through all the logistics.”

Despite the Titans being forced to Sydney, the Gold Coast Suns were able to train on their main training oval on Sunday and will stay home until they travel to Perth to play West Coast on Sunday.