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Brisbane conceded 100 points or more 10 times in 2026. Brisbane lost by 7+ goals five times in 2026. Brisbane conceded a higher average expected score than 10 sides in 2026. Brisbane was walloped in a Qualifying Final in 2026. Brisbane were 17 points down with barely four minutes to play in the Grand Final in 2026. Yet, despite all this, Brisbane are the Premiers in 2026.
When confronted with the overwhelming amount of data created by Saturday’s Grand Final, and the paradox of Brisbane’s impossible-yet-inevitable triumph, the mind tends to reach for metaphors. As Patrick Voss wheeled away in celebration after putting Fremantle 17 points up with five minutes left to play, it was tempting to think of Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star. Except, in the version of the story that played out on Saturday, Darth Vader used the force to deflect the torpedoes back at his foes. Or if David had almost slain Goliath. Or if the final boss in a video game had revealed a second health bar after you’d exhausted all your ammo depleting the first one.
All these metaphors help tell the story of the end of how the Lions kicked four goals to win their third straight flag. But none quite capture the scale of their conquest. In the days since the game, a different metaphor has lodged itself in my mind. This Brisbane side is footy’s Roman Empire: decadently powerful, prone to temporary lapses but unstinting in the pursuit of victory on its own terms, led by a young ruler beginning to grasp the extent of his power, and destined to be the subject of awe and study for as long as people think about such things.
This game, this season, and very possibly Brisbane and Fremantle’s medium-term trajectories, was decided by individual moments of outrageous skill and impossible luck. The maddening thing about defeats like the one Fremantle suffered on Saturday – not that there’s ever really been one of those – is that you can point to half-a-dozen factors that might plausibly have swung the result. Lachie Neale didn’t have a great Grand Final, but if he wasn’t on the field in the last five minutes, would the Lions have been able to engineer those game-winning clearances? Ashcroft’s final clearance of the game was the product of a freak bounce that took it away from Caleb Serong, who was poised to take it away and deliver the ball inside 50. Josh Treacy missed from the goal square. Hayden Young was too afraid of being penalised for holding the ball when under tackle pressure so instead handballed it over the boundary to cede possession to the Lions for their game-winning drive. Karl Worner chose to spoil a kick he could have marked. Logan Morris, who had to that point of the game been shackled so effectively by Oscar McDonald, took a one-on-one contested mark and slotted the ensuing set shot. Yet it’s unthinkable that Fremantle would have been drawn up the field like that had captain Alex Pearce been on the field. Instead, the hirsute key back was on the bench, icing his injured Achilles. Those moments will be permanently inscribed into the psyches of Fremantle and Brisbane supporters and etched into the unfinished tapestry of footy folklore. None went the Dockers’ way on a day when they were otherwise the better side.
Only the most spiteful West Coast fan could have scripted such a ludicrously cruel defeat for Fremantle. Footy has never produced a finer yet larger gap between agony and ecstasy. Had the result that looked overwhelmingly likely after Voss kicked his third goal held, sensible Lions fans would have reflected on four successive Grand Finals which yielded two wins and two narrow defeats – an excellent run by any objective measure. Freo fans would have been celebrating a first Premiership and the end of a painfully long drought. Instead, they must confront the horror of what happened.
I had about an hour of the 2017 Grand Final to process the fact that Adelaide wasn’t the main character in the story that was unfolding, but was instead just one final adversary for the hero to vanquish on their journey. Dockers fans had seconds to try and comprehend the same. I’m not sure how they could. To paraphrase Dan Campbell, coach of another down-on-its-luck football side, the Detroit Lions of the NFL, when reflecting on his side’s capitulation in the equivalent of the prelim final: that may have been Freo’s best shot. We tend to remember the sides that rebounded from painful Grand Final losses to eventually win one because they’re romantic stories. But the reality is that it’s at least as common for that to be the apex of a side’s cycle. Freo are good and young, the two strongest predictors of future success. But the Dockers had a dream run: a good run with injuries, minor premiers, a home qualifying final, and prelim against a depleted Sydney side. They played a good Grand Final. As Emlyn Breese explained in his review of the game for This Week In Football, Justin Longmuir’s side largely succeeded in preventing Brisbane’s kick-mark chains. All this, plus a three-score lead with fewer than five minutes to play, and they still couldn’t quite get the job done. There’s really no precedent for rebounding from the sort of disappointment the Dockers suffered. The pain will burn until they actually win one.
The flipside of an improbable defeat is an almost-impossible dynasty. The Lions became just the seventh side since 2001 to win a game when down by 14-17 points at the 23-minute mark of the last quarter. At that point, their odds of winning were barely more than 1%. They’ve won four finals when behind at that late stage since 2022 – the same as the rest of the league combined. Brisbane appeared intent on exploring just how little energy they could expend while still winning the flag. They required three quarters to win the Grand Final in 2024, a half to win it in 2025, and five minutes to win it in 2026. Brisbane would get flogged – five defeats of 7+ goals! – and shrug their shoulders. Not even a Qualifying Final was enough to rouse them from their indifference. Rome was sacked several times even during the peak of imperial power. It didn’t matter. The empire would learn its lessons and flex its muscles to avoid the same outcome next time. It’s worth digging into just how much of an outlier Brisbane’s profile this season was.
The last flag-winning side to concede more points per game than Brisbane did in 2026 was North Melbourne in 1999. The deterioration in the side’s defensive numbers were offset by an improvement in the side’s already-formidable attacking prowess. The Lions averaged 109.6 points per game this season, more than any Premier since Hawthorn averaged 109.7 points per game in 2015. The end result of those shifts are that, as vulnerable as Brisbane appeared, their per-game point differential was more or less in line with sides that have won the flag in the last decade.
The evolution of Brisbane’s profile is the product of two factors, one psychological, the other tactical. The Lions’ players all carried the supreme confidence – the arrogance, some chagrined opposition supporters might say – of winning successive flags. That creates both the apparent indifference to shocking one-off results in Home & Away games and the belief that, when the stakes are their highest, they can perform to their maximum ability. You can map this belief. The Lions have played in 11 must-win finals in the last four seasons. They have won the second halves in all 11. The 2023 Grand Final (+2) was the closest. This is a side that, when it must win, simply never believes it will lose.
The Lions have also crested the wave of a league-wide shift in how footy is played. The AFL’s introduction of a suite of rules meant to incentivise speed, transition, and one-on-one matchups have benefited sides with Brisbane’s exact profile: elite midfields, precise kicking from half-back, and speedy small forwards.
Scoring increased by 6% in 2026, but total scoring in Brisbane’s games increased by 19.5%, the most of any side. Games featuring the Lions in 2026 averaged the highest total volume of scores of any Premiership side since… Brisbane in 2001. The league has made all-out attack more viable than ever. The Lions obliged – and, in the process, wound the clock back 25 years. They’ve gone back to the future.
Part of the reason why Saturday’s result has been regarded by many as a triumph of footy evil over good, of the Galactic Empire over the Rebel Alliance, of the Romans against the Gauls, is because it supposedly represents yet another nail in the coffin of the idea of rebuilding “the right way” through the draft. Beyond the contrasts in styles and recent success, the Grand Final was billed as a case study in two different approaches to list building. The Dockers, famously, don’t have a single father-son or Next Generation Academy player (of their own) in their best 23. List manager David Walls has built patiently from the ground-up: key backs and midfielders first, then key forwards (including one of the all-time Rookie Draft selections in Josh Treacy) and adroit trades when the side was primed to contend. It’s a narrow path that Fremantle has walked well. If they, or Hawthorn, who have similarly relied on good drafting and trading throughout their build, couldn’t do the job, then what hope is there for the sides currently down the bottom of the ladder?
There’s a lot to say about the state of equalisation in the AFL, most of which I’ll save for a piece I’m planning to write over the off-season. As worried as I am about it, I don’t think Saturday’s result, or Brisbane’s fragile dynasty, is quite the death knell for organic rebuilds that many people believe. For one thing, both Hawthorn and Fremantle were as close to knocking off Brisbane – an umpiring decision here, a freak injury to a key defender there – as it’s possible to get. Luck matters more than we realise. I also think that analysis oversimplifies how the Lions built their list. The crux of the argument is that the last mile to glory is the longest, and we don’t know if the Lions would have traversed it without Will Ashcroft. He, along with younger brother Levi and 2025 Academy draftee Dan Annable, will form the nucleus of a top four-calibre midfield for the next decade. Should a side that was already entrenched in the top rungs of the ladder have had priority access to such premium talents? Morally, probably not. But the counter-argument is that, by the rules of the day, the Lions were entitled to them. Perhaps, if forced to operate under the stricter bid matching criteria introduced this season, they might not have been able to draft Annable. But he has not yet made an impact at AFL level. The Lions would still have won this year’s flag without him on their list. The keener observation is that, had they needed to give up more to match a bid on the Ashcrofts, the Lions might have needed to give up the pick that they used to draft Logan Morris the following year. It’s much harder to mount a credible argument that Morris and Will Ashcroft haven’t been instrumental in the last two flags, or that they won’t be crucial parts of Brisbane’s future.
The Lions have been beneficiaries of a rich crop of club-tied players and generous bid matching criteria. Port Adelaide, to use an example, will be forced to pay a far steeper cost to draft their upcoming clutch of Academy and father-son prospects. That’s all true. But it’s also true that the Lions have taken their licks. Between 2010 and 2018, they won just 55 out of 198 games. For reference, North Melbourne has won 51 of 197 games in the last nine years. Concerns about Brisbane’s long-term viability as a club didn’t feel far-fetched, especially after the ignominy of the Go-Home Five. The Lions frittered away valuable draft picks and lamented what they didn’t have. Chris Fagan’s appointment as coach in October 2016 marked a break with the past. The club realised that only it was going to pull itself out of its predicament. And it started nailing its draft picks and trade targets. The first two players drafted under the Fagan regime were Hugh McCluggage (the best player in an otherwise underwhelming top 10) and Jarrod Berry. Cam Rayner and Zac Bailey joined the year after. The Lions were one of the first non-Victorian clubs to grasp the value of drafting players from country Victoria and, in the fateful case of Lincoln McCarthy and Lachie Neale, using close friendships as a lure to recruit players who moved the needle. They have benefited enormously since becoming an attractive destination. But they succeeded in arguably the hardest part of the job: becoming an attractive destination.
The more insightful criticism is that the combination of Brisbane’s skill and Brisbane’s luck has allowed the Lions to reach a level no one else can touch. Their recruiters had the inside track on Harris Andrews in the 2014 draft at a time when few other clubs bothered to do their due diligence on Northern Academy products because of how easy it was to match bids. Their list manager had at least two years to plan for the Ashcroft brothers and was able to roll the dice on more speculative types like Darcy Wilmot and Kai Lohmann instead, safe in the knowledge that the midfield did not require immediate attention. Beneficial side deals under the old Draft Value Index enabled the Lions to stash later picks for bid matching in exchange for first- and second-round picks. That those advantages have compounded matters in a league where the margins between first and second are this fine.
The hope is that, as the AFL has made it harder for top-four sides to draft their father-son and Academy prospects at deep discounts, it becomes easier for the worst sides to draft the best players. Ask supporters of clubs currently near the bottom of the ladder and you’ll quickly realise this idea is regarded with deep scepticism. They tend to grasp something important: equalisation isn’t just about upward mobility, it’s also about the likelihood of the best teams becoming worse. Brisbane has won three straight flags and shows no obvious signs of weakening. Beyond Lachie Neale, who will depart as an Unrestricted Free Agent, the nucleus of this side is in its mid-to-late 20s. Harris Andrews isn’t turning 30 until December. Charlie Cameron and Dayne Zorko will need replacing soon, but it’s eminently possible that their replacements are already on the Lions’ list. Morris and the Ashcrofts are really just getting started. More Academy talents are no doubt on their way.
The Lions have climbed out of the basement to the penthouse. We should accept that as a natural and healthy thing. What’s harder to accept is that, because of players they had priority access to when they were already ascendant, and because the easiest way to become good in the AFL is simply to be good already, the Lions will remain powerful for the foreseeable future. That’s why they’re the Roman Empire. They might get lazy or decadent. On their day, their capital might get sacked. But they simply shrug it off. Because they know there will be other battles and believe they will win them. They will be the standard by which other sides are judged for so long that it will become difficult to imagine a time when they weren’t.