2025 AFL Season Previews: Brisbane
How will they go with no Joe?
The second of my previews looks at the reigning Premiers.
2024 ladder position: 5th (14 wins, 8 losses, 1 draw – Premiers)
2024 best-and-fairest: Lachie Neale
Senior coach: Chris Fagan
Story of the season
Deserved and popular Premiers. The Lions overcame significant adversity throughout the season, including injuries to important players (Keidean Coleman, Lincoln McCarthy, Oscar McInerney, Tom Doedee), a 2-5 start, and inconveniently-timed rumours about Joe Daniher’s future to lift the cup on the last Saturday of September. There were multiple moments when the mountain looked too high to climb: the home loss to Collingwood in Round 3, the dreadful loss to GWS in Round 7, back-to-back defeats which cost them a top-four spot, and – most famously – a 44-point deficit midway through the third quarter of their Semi Final against the Giants. Nevertheless, they persevered, and served up the closest thing to a fairytale flag we’ve seen for several years.
Summary of game style
If not for the last two games of 2024, I could have just copied and pasted this section from what I wrote last year. Inspired by the control vs. chaos heuristic introduced by Daniel Hoyne of Champion Data, I developed a janky little metric that takes the average number of marks a team took per game, minus their average number of ground ball gets. It’s fairly rough – for one thing, teams aren’t always able to choose between control and chaos. The mean of every team’s “control index” numbers for 2024 was 3.1, which basically just means that there was an average of 3.1 more ground ball gets than marks per game across the season. The Lions, however, were a huge outlier, averaging 20 more marks than ground ball gets per game, by far the most of any side. It’s not like they’re poor at ground level, either – they ranked second in the AFL for ground ball gets differential. It’s more that Chris Fagan’s side prefers to control the game by winning the ball in close, getting it to the outside, and using their best kickers to slash opposition defensive zones to ribbons. In 2024, the Lions were ranked 1st in the AFL for kicks and kicks as a share of disposals.
But Plan A was thrown into disarray when Oscar McInerney’s shoulder popped out of its socket with five minutes remaining in the first quarter of the Preliminary Final. Fagan, anxious to maintain parity at stoppages, shifted Joe Daniher from the forward line to cover his absence. Mindful that a forward line deprived of its best tall would offer less of a marking threat, he also instructed his high half-forwards (Kai Lohmann, Zac Bailey, Callum Ah Chee and Cam Rayner) to stretch the field by coming closer to the contest and spreading rapidly when the Lions won the ball. It took some time to work – after Patrick Dangerfield goaled early in the third, the Cats were out by four – but it ended up a stunning success. The Cats’ defensive unit was repeatedly pulled out of shape, and the Lions ended up gaining more than 500 metres via handball, the most by any side in a final since Richmond in 2017. It was an intriguing glimpse of a chaos-focused Plan B that Fagan could deploy in the first year of the post-Daniher era.
List changes
In:
Levi Ashcroft (2024 National Draft, pick #5 – father/son)
Sam Marshall (2024 National Draft, pick #25 – Lions Academy)
Ty Gallop (2024 National Draft, pick #42 – Lions Academy)
Sam Day (2025 Pre-season Draft)
Out:
Harry Sharp (trade – Melbourne)
James Madden (delisted)
Kalin Lane (delisted)
Carter Michael (delisted)
Jaxon Prior (delisted)
Joe Daniher (retired)
Jarryd Lyons (retired)
List profile
Number of top-10 draft picks: six (T-10th)
Average age at Opening Round: 25.4 (2nd)
Average number of games played: 85.9 (2nd)
A year ago, you could easily find pundits who believed the Lions were too old, too psychologically scarred from the 2023 Grand Final, and too dependent on a pair of flaky key forwards to win a Premiership. Winning a grand final by 10 goals is a good way to get everyone to admit the obvious truth – the Lions’ list is absolutely bursting with quality. On paper, it’s slightly weaker than last year (Joe Daniher for Levi Ashcroft and Sam Marshall will be a worthwhile “trade” in five years, but probably not in 2025), but the reintroduction of Coleman, Doedee and McCarthy following their knee injuries will add more depth and quality to the Lions’ defence and half-forward lines.
The backline will once again be led by Dayne Zorko and Harris Andrews. Zorko, who’s been a half-back for two seasons now, has never played better footy, a personal triumph culminating in becoming the oldest player named in the All-Australian side. Last year, the Lions conceded the second-fewest forward-50 ground ball gets, the second-lowest expected score, the third-fewest shots, and the fourth-fewest inside-50 marks – all while providing a great source of scoring (the Lions were third in the AFL for scores from the back half). The closest thing to a weakness is Andrews’ key position partner – Jack Payne is merely decent rather than excellent.
Brisbane’s midfield blends quality with stability. McInerney, Lachie Neale, Hugh McCluggage and Josh Dunkley attended almost three-quarters of all possible centre bounces last year. That will change slightly this year as Will Ashcroft becomes a bigger part of the main rotation – he attended a greater share of centre bounces than Hugh McCluggage until his ACL rupture in 2023 – but the main contributors all know each other’s games well. The most interesting personnel-related question is how many of Cam Rayner’s or Zac Bailey’s centre bounce attendances will be taken by Levi Ashcroft. Whatever the precise blend, this is still a fantastic midfield that excels in winning the hard ball and delivering to a dangerous forward line.
The closest thing the Lions will have to a problem area is their forward line – all because of the slightly surprising retirement of Joe Daniher. I’d always thought that looking slightly goofy meant many people didn’t really grasp how good Joe was. He was a unicorn – a great mark, excellent at ground level for a man his size, a creative user, and a very handy part-time ruck. He will leave an enigmatic, mustachioed hole. I see three options. The first is to simply replace Daniher with Sam Day (or Darcy Fort, should Day be unavailable). The best way for this to work is to probably split the key forward responsibilities more evenly (i.e. kick it to Eric Hipwood more) and give Day the relatively simple remit of crashing packs and bringing the ball to ground. The second option is to adopt the small-ball style used in the second half of the prelim with Hipwood as the sole tall forward, thereby delegating more of the scoring responsibility to the Lions’ smalls and mediums. In reality, Fagan will probably opt for a combination of the two, starting with Day or Fort as a marking target while also directing his half-forwards to drift into midfield positions post-clearance and stretch the play.
Line rankings
Defence: Elite
Midfield: Elite
Forwards: Above Average
Ruck: Above Average
The case for optimism
I mean – they’re the reigning Premiers. And, with the exception of the tricky but by no means unsolvable tactical problem created by Daniher’s retirement, the Lions look well set up for sustained success. Brisbane’s is the second-oldest list in the AFL. But that's a fact in need of context. One perspective is, bluntly – who cares? AFL lists are made to win flags, not fulfil the fetish for the potential of youth. Another is that calling the Lions old is more of a function of how misleading it can be to assess list age by just looking at raw numbers. A better way to do it is instead considering how much on-field value players in different age brackets are contributing. Most ways you slice it, the Lions are doing just fine.
Sean Lawson, a great writer and analyst whose work has appeared in the ABC and the footy nerd bible, Footballistics, created this neat chart which shows the age distribution of the top 25 players (by player rating) for each list. Small caveat: each player appears to be a few months older than they are in reality. Nevertheless, the data shows that young players like Darcy Wilmot, Kai Lohmann, Will Ashcroft, Jaspa Fletcher and Logan Morris are all contributing on-field value, as are mid-career players like Coleman, Rayner and Bailey. We’re not talking about The Expendables here. Drill a little deeper and you’ll find that three of top-10 rated Lions players for the last 20 games are 22 or younger. Adelaide, by way of comparison, have just one. None of this even considers the potential impact of Levi Ashcroft, the father-son pick #5 who many serious draft watchers touted as the most talented midfielder in the entire draft crop.
Managers of football teams (of various codes) have often opined about the psychology of what happens after the first success. Sir Alex Ferguson, famously and perhaps somewhat self-servingly, suggested that the true measure of a team’s greatness was the ability to set isolated successes aside and win multiple titles in succession. Chris Fagan’s will to win is probably slightly less psychotic than Ferguson’s. But something tells me that, rather than feeling sated and satisfied, this Lions team will want more. So many of them have been on a multi-year journey together. They have climbed all the way from sea level to the mountaintop. They know that the chance to get back there again may not come around again soon. I wrote in this section last year that one could, rather easily, make the case that Brisbane were the best team in the AFL. After years of trying, they have the cup to prove it. Why not prove it again?
The case for pessimism
I’ll repeat what I’ve already mentioned above – the case for pessimism is that the Lions can’t (or take too long to) make a Daniher-less forward line work. To quote Moneyball, there are plausible ways to recreate Joe in the aggregate. But it’s tough to see any of them, at least in the short term, being quite the equal of the real thing. Daniher was a skilled and versatile player. Just four players since 2020 have recorded at least 400 disposals and kicked 40 goals in a season: Isaac Heeney, Toby Greene, Shai Bolton, and… Joe. He was also a creative player, willing and capable of doing things that other key forwards couldn’t see or wouldn’t try. Beyond what he did on the field, he was also clearly beloved by his teammates. He was always going to do things his way. But there’s no denying that it’s thrown a spanner in the works.
The only other two things I can immediately see that might prompt some anxiety among Lions fans, other than the fact that winning flags is very hard and probably shouldn’t be an expectation, would be an injury to Harris Andrews, or the fact that Lachie Neale is approaching the age where you’d expect to see the first (gentle) signs of decline. The dual Brownlow medallist will turn 32 a couple of months into the season. Although even as I’m saying that, I’m wondering if I believe it. 2024 was the highest rated season of his entire career, and he’s never built his game on explosive speed. Even if Neale shows the early signs of footy mortality, there are a couple of Ashcrofts who could gracefully and gradually start taking his midfield minutes. Not much cause for pessimism!
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Breakout player
Last year’s prediction of Jaspa Fletcher wasn’t bad, but Kai Lohmann would have been a better one. The high-flying half-forward from Ballarat turned heads and it honestly wouldn’t have been a shock had he been awarded the Norm Smith Medal. This year, I’ll go for Logan Morris. The boy who played two games in one day, had a pre-match meal of Maccas and soup, and played in undersized boots made a fair impression in his first season, kicking 24 goals from 19 games and recording a higher player rating than Jamarra Ugle-Hagan (and teammate Eric Hipwood). His aerial ability and willingness to crash packs might just make him an effective Joe Daniher replacement.
Most important player
Lachie Neale. Harris Andrews. Lachie Neale. Harris Andrews. Neale. Andrews. A tough choice. I’ll give it to Harris Andrews, because the quality of his immediate replacement (probably Jack Payne, with Ryan Lester taking the second opposition tall?) is worse than Neale’s.
Biggest question to answer
How will the Lions fare without Joe Daniher? I’ve laid out the most likely options. But none feel quite as convincing as the real thing.
What success looks like
Setting the bar for success at “winning another Premiership” feels awfully high. Realistically, all the Lions can do is give themselves another chance. Finish Top 4, win the Qualifying Final, and then see what happens.
In a nutshell
It’s a great time to be a Lions fan. Their list is stacked, and their players have tasted success. If the Lions can get used to the No Joe Show, they could well go back-to-back.
Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against Brisbane? Share your thoughts in the comments.