For most supporters, March is the last time we can truly feel hopeful about our football team. Despite this sense of pre-season optimism, more than likely your team will suck and quickly crush your spirt and soul, like they do every year. This a guide on what to expect from your team in 2018. (Full credit to Drew Magary and Deadspin for this idea. Click here to view his guide for all 32 NFL teams.)
Your team:
The Trey Smith of the AFL. (Will Smith’s first-born son, he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page to link to).
Your 2017: The Lions finally broke through and won something, a wooden spoon! One of the most amazing achievements from Brisbane’s recent run of complete hopelessness was their inability to ever suck bad enough to finish last and at least earn themselves the number one pick. Thanks to another pathetic four-win season, the Lions dropped that one spot to finish 18th and earn themselves the wooden spoon, the second in their post-Fitzroy history.
After squeaking out a first up win in the highly anticipated Q Clash, Brisbane went on a nine-game losing streak, reaching their Round 11 bye in 18th position. They promptly stayed there for the rest of the season. Despite some hairy moments where both Carlton and North Melbourne were looming to steal that wooden spoon, Brisbane completed the triumph with a 51-point loss at home to the Roos in the final round.
They continued their recent traditions of being both completely awful at home, going 3-8 and being hideously weak defensively. In a league where one team (Adelaide) averaged over 100-points-per-game in the home and away season, the Lions conceded an average of 114-points-per-game. The most amazing part of that stat was that they actually improved on their 2016 performance by 16-points-per-game. Yes, in a league of rolling mauls, flooding, impotent attacks and hideously assembled forward lines, Brisbane has averaged over 122-points-against-per-game over the last two seasons!
Off field they had to put up with the on-going saga of their “talented” young forward Josh Schache wanting to go home to Victoria. After taking time off during the season and heading home, he re-signed and then still requested a trade. I’m sure the Lions were desperate to hold onto the former number-two pick who has averaged less than a goal-a-game in his 27-game career. But alas it’s a tough life for a 20-year, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, living in eternal sunshine, out of the footy limelight and he fled to the Bulldogs in exchange for a second-round pick. To put that in perspective, the last tall forward taken in the top two picks of the draft to flee back to Victoria, Tom Boyd, netted GWS the sixth-pick in the draft and a former club captain in Ryan Griffen.
What’s new that sucks: He’s arrived!!! The captain’s captain, the footballer’s footballer, the drunk drivers’ drunk driver, you’ve picked up the one, the only, the unstoppable object, the greatest good bloke to ever grace an AFL field, Luke “Hodgey” Hodge! Recruiting coups don’t get any more exciting than that, a washed-up, over-the-hill, 33-year old who has pretty much nothing to play for aside from earning a footballer’s salary for one more year. The most exciting part of his season will be picking the round he first completely goes apeshit and gets himself suspended. And don’t go thinking he’s still exempt from the wrath of AFL tribunal, he’s not covered in brown and gold anymore. Although it is Hodgey, so you might still be okay.
Outside of the great one, number one draft pick Cam Rayner has arrived, after already publicly having to quell doubts about wanting to play with the Lions long-term, that’s always a great sign. He has since signed an extension to his original two-year deal, presumably he signed his future three-year contract to Richmond on the same day. As Schache proved, contract extensions don’t really mean much in Brisbane, so Rayner could easily flee his way back to Victoria within a year or two.
The Lions also traded for Charlie Cameron, who remarkably actually wanted go back home to Brisbane. By 2018, this is the only way the Lions can attract genuine talent from other clubs, Cameron joins Dayne Beams and Tom Bell as the only recruits who picked Brisbane specifically, the rest (Josh Walker, Mitch Robinson, Ryan Bastinac, Allen Christensen) just had nowhere else to go, for one reason or another. Luckily Cameron will arrive in a similar situation to his former club where he had the midfield support to utilise his skillset of being a pacey, outside midfielder who can burst forward of centre and kick goals… oh wait.
What has always sucked: About this team? From 2004, pretty much everything. Since their Grand Final four-peat was derailed by Port Adelaide, the Lions have made the finals once, once! That’s as pathetic as Melbourne, in fact it’s worse, Melbourne have played finals twice in that span. And yet no one is even aware of that fact, I had to look it up.
Brisbane truly are the most irrelevant team in the competition. Playing in the AFL graveyard that is Queensland, Kevin McCallister got more love from his family on Christmas Eve than the Lions do from the AFL. They still can’t even get a proper training facility built, even North Melbourne achieved that feat. They’re consistently last in memberships, their crowds are terrible and they have a revolving door of executives with stories of in-fighting being an annual occurrence.
These are facts and figures, but to appreciate the extent of the hopelessness, you really need to go watch a game at the Gabba. Firstly, you get off the plane in Brisbane and wander the streets of the truly lifeless concrete jungle that is Brisbane and I challenge you to find even a hint that the Lions exist. A banner, a sign, an ad, a child wearing a damn Brisbane hat, anything. On game day, you travel out to what, after the demolition of Subiaco, must be the most rundown stadium in the league where you will be met with 75% empty seats and a true sense that football doesn’t belong here. There’s no excitement, no joy, fans trudge in just to give them something to do. Away fans are always louder than the home support, it’s the closest thing Australia has to a Los Angeles Chargers home game. It’s a real A-League atmosphere. A few thousand die-hards mixed in with a bunch of theatregoers who treat going to the football like visiting a museum or playing golf, just something to pass the time.
And maybe that’s why no one wants to play up there, because I can’t figure it out. Queensland has an almost perfect climate pretty much all year round, you’re completely away from the AFL bubble of Victoria, I assume no one would even recognise you walking around the streets of Brisbane or around the suburbs just outside the capital and you can escape the non-stop news cycle whenever you feel like it.
The list of players Brisbane has lost to other clubs in recent years rivals anyone, even Carlton. Sam Docherty and Elliot Yeo have turned into genuine superstars, there’s Jack Redden and Jared Polec and now Tom Rockliff. The majority leaving because they don’t want to play in Queensland, I don’t understand it, but I bet Hugh McCluggage is a year or two away from packing his bags and joining the exodus. It must be hard playing for a team which hasn’t finished above 15th since 2013.
This year there seems to be a sense of genuine optimism that the Lions will actually improve. They have a list full of first-rounders, thanks to stockpiling picks from players fleeing the Sunshine State and a coach who seemingly knows what he’s doing. Although the last time there was this sense of optimism was in 2015 and Brisbane went on to win four-games, so who knows?
Did you know? The Lions haven’t made a single profit off-field since 2007.
Past Brisbane Lions players:
- Leigh Ryswyk
- Bradd Dalziell
- Aaron Shattock
- Lane Spaanderman
- Damien Cupido
What might not suck: Eric Hipwood is a beast and is going to be so much better than Schache. Lions fans probably already know that the Bulldogs did them a favour. I’m also rooting for Chris Fagan after hearing a glorious story involving him and Alastair Clarkson after Hawthorn were eliminated by the Bulldogs in 2016 semi-final.
