Chris Fagan believes in Brisbane. Brisbane is where he made his fortune. And he raised his team in a Brisbane fashion – from the ground after a long hangover brought on by poor decisions and shacking up with the wrong people.
When Fagan took over in 2017, he inherited a genuine basket case. They were a toxic club and had been for quite some time and they had lost genuine guns because of that toxicity (notably Sam Docherty and Elliot Yeo in 2013). The Lions won just 3 games in 2016, but that alone does not tell the full story. Despite Harris Andrews being on the list and making the 22 under 22 team that year, Brisbane conceded 79 more goals than any other team in the AFL in 2016. They conceded about 130 points per game. It’s not as if they were the 7 seconds or less Phoenix Suns either, only kicking the 14th most goals for the year in 2016. Dayne Zorko was Brisbane’s best and fairest for 2016. Mitch Robinson was second.
In short, Chris Fagan took over during civil wartime.
In 2017, Brisbane still finished bottom of the ladder winning only 5 games. But toward the end of the season there were signs of things to come with the Lions winning 4 out of their final 12 games and they started to show a little bit of spirit after a fractious offseason.
In 2018, again, it was much of the same. A spirited year where they finished 17th and again won just 5 games. But this time, their average losing margin was 25 points as compared to 41 a year earlier and they had 4 losses by less than a goal. This was also Charlie Cameron, Cam Rayner and Luke Hodge’s first years at the club and Hugh McLuggage’s first year where he showed himself to be a future gun. Critically, it was also Dayne Beams’ last year at the club as they were able to foist him onto Collingwood that offseason where he was unable to play a game after struggling with significant mental health issues.
In 2019 the fog of war lifted.
They finished second on the ladder on percentage and won 16 games. Their excellent drafting and list building started pay off with big ticket additions Charlie Cameron and Lachie Neale having dominant years while draftees like Harris Andrews, Hugh McLuggage and Jarrod Berry all showed themselves to be either elite or borderline elite talents. They were deeply watchable in 2019 as the highest scoring team in footy while also strengthening the defences around Harris Andrews.
Even though Brisbane was bundled out in straight sets in the finals, Fagan had dragged the Lions out of the doldrums of civil war but could he deliver in the war against other clubs?
2020 had to be the year. In a season ravaged by COVID-19 the whole competition shifted into Fagan’s backyard in the least hostile takeover since Paris in 1940. The AFL decided that the Grand Final was going to be played at the Gabba and Lions players were in a very select group of contenders who got to go home and sleep in their own beds after games during that season. Brisbane was excellent again in 2020, again finishing second only on percentage. They won their first final under Fagan, beating the eventual premiers by 15 points before getting smoked by 40 points by Geelong in the preliminary final. They barely gave a yelp in that game. In a season where they were 6th in Goals for the season and one of only 8 teams to manage to kick 9 goals a game, the Lions only kicked 6.6 in that prelim and allowed Geelong to generate 27 scoring shots.
2021 and 2022 were much the same with Brisbane being typically excellent winning 15 and 17 games respectively but again they never made a grand final despite having one of the 3 or 4 most talented lists in the game.
Chris Fagan enters 2023 with a record of 3-6 in AFL finals. Despite this, Fagan was extended in March 2023 for 2 years and is set to stay in his role until 2025 under his new deal.
It is inane to say that the Lions will be terrible this year because they were flogged by Port Adelaide in round 1. However, it is not inane to say that this year and next are probably the window in which to win that elusive premiership. In my estimation they are the most talented list in the AFL after the additions of Josh Dunkley and Jack Gunston, other than possibly Melbourne. Their best players like Neale, Zorko, Lyons and Cameron are either approaching or past 30 and their once young talent is now smack bang in their physical prime. The Lions entered 2023 as the third oldest list in the AFL and fourth most experienced.
It's now or never.
Based on the abbreviated history of Chris Fagan’s Lions’ tenure above, Chris Fagan has proved himself to be what Tom Hagen in The Godfather was not: a wartime consigliere at least when the fighting was largely in house. Fagan absolutely would not have allowed Santino to be outfought by that pimp Tattaglia, for instance. He would have kept Sonny on the straight and narrow and stabilised the family when Don Vito was shot. The internal war and subsequent rebuild is where Fagan thrives.
While Fagan has built for the future like Tom Hagen would have, neither Hagen nor Fagan have been able to execute when external forces come knocking with hostile intent. Hagen failed to guide Sonny effectively and, thus far, Fagan has not been able to get the Lions over that last hurdle of playing in, let alone winning, a Grand Final.
Time will tell if Brisbane’s lack of a Michael Corleone instinct to kick Fagan out and install a shrewd manipulator at the helm will spell doom for an extremely talented but ultimately disappointing list.
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