‘Simple as that’: The ‘lesson’ for rest of AFL in Lions’ blueprint to crack ‘tough’ Broncos market

As Andrew Wellington assessed the boom of Brisbane this week, the Lions chairman had no qualms in pointing to the template of their Grand Final rival Geelong as a model they have mimicked.

The Lions are in the midst of an extraordinarily consistent period unparalleled in the national competition, with their phenomenal form on the field translating into significant success beyond the boundary.

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In the sunshine state ruled by rugby league for a century, with the Brisbane Broncos to play for a spot in the NRL grand final on Sunday, the Lions have forged a strong foundation for the AFL.

But the current administration is determined to ensure the success is sustained after a bust following the initial boom created by the premiership hat-trick at the start of the century.

“Quite deliberately, when we sat down a few years ago and spoke about ‘What did we want the club to become and where did we want to get to?’, we talked very much about how we didn’t want to be a flash in the pan,” Wellington told foxfooty.com.au this week.

“We didn’t want to go all-in on one particular year to try to win a flag, because we felt in this market, you work hard to get supporters, but they’re not generational supporters, and you can lose them if you’re only up there for two or three years and then drop away.

“We liked the sort of Geelong and Sydney model where you’re trying to be consistently competitive and then every now and again, you’ll manage to win a flag.

“You’re not going to win it every year. It is not about players in front of picks. It is a mix. It is a balance and you are trying to keep the balance right.”

The Lions on Saturday will be playing in their sixth Grand Final when it comes to the club as an entirety — a streak that started when their AFLW team hosted Melbourne at Brighton Homes Arena in the 2022 decider.

The Lions AFLW side, who play on Sunday in a milestone 100th match for club favourite Ally Anderson, clinched their second premiership from nine seasons in 2023 by defeating North Melbourne — a result that was reversed last November in the decider.

Chris Fagan, meanwhile, has led the Lions back to the promised land after an extended period in the doldrums, with a heartbreaking loss in the 2023 decider spurring the team on to last year’s famous flag and a tilt at another premiership today.

From the doldrums a decade ago, with membership in decline and favourite sons Michael Voss and Justin Leppitsch unable to turn around Brisbane’s fortunes, the club is again a powerhouse in Queensland and beyond.

Memberships have soared beyond 75,000. A study released by pollsters Roy Morgan this week revealed Brisbane had the second-most supporters overall in all codes behind the Sydney Swans.

And they are in the hunt for another flag.

The methodology of sustained success is a blueprint Brisbane legend Jonathan Brown approves of, having noted how difficult a period the Lions endured in the decade after playing in four straight Grand Finals between 2001 and 2004.

“It’s about competitiveness on the field, it is as simple as that,” he said.

“It is a really tough market up there and they’ll drop off you pretty quick if you don’t show that success, or are at least around the mark. That is what you would expect up there, because they are very proud.

“You have got to be competitive. There is a demand for success. Queenslanders are proud and they want winners.”

LIFE AS A LION ON A ROLLERCOASTER RIDE

Fox Footy analyst Alastair Lynch still gets a thrill when he walks out on to the Gabba to a packed house and hears the crowd belting out Country Roads after another Charlie Cameron goal.

The volume of the roar is at a similar octane to when the champion forward was parading around the forward line for a Brisbane team stacked with brilliance across every line in the early 2000s.

From the ‘Fab Four’ in the midfield — headed by Voss and featuring fellow Brownlow Medallists Simon Black and Jason Akermanis along with Nigel Lappin, who will be wearing rival colours on Saturday — to the Scott brothers in defence and through to a burly teenager named Brown, it has claims to being the best team in the modern era with three flags.

But Lynch also knows what it is like when things are not so bright and understands why the Lions are striving to remain in the hunt for as long as possible.

The three-time premiership forward was a star signing for the ‘Bad News’ Bears and became the Lions’ first captain when they merged with Fitzroy for the 1997 season.

Retiring after the infamous 2004 Grand Final, Lynch worked as a footy analyst and broadcaster through the dark days of last decade when the average attendance of just over 16,000 is half today’s crowd. He is glad the boom is back.

“I’ve joked about it in the past, but it was such a secondary sport in the 90s and could hide away quite easily if you lost on the weekend,” he said.

“If you played for a Melbourne team, every time you went for a coffee, you would get reminded about it, or something like that. Whereas in Brisbane it was vastly different. You could hide away, which had a good and bad part to it.”

During Leigh Matthews’ tenure in charge this changed significantly, with Lynch saying that period of success helped entrench Brisbane and Australian rules footy in the mindset of Queenslanders, even if the success did not last.

“It grew enormously from the mid ‘90s to, say, 2001, ‘02 and ‘03 when the club was up and going,” he said.

“That recognition certainly grew, and so did the recognition of the individuals and the team and the code. So the code certainly grew. Even this week here, just walking around today while going to the shops, people have been singing out ‘good luck on the weekend’.

“Not that I do anything, but that sort of conversation is going on all around the place and people are watching the game and people are going to the game, and there’s enormous respect for the club and what they’re doing at the moment. So yeah, it’s grown a lot over the last 30 years.”

THE PILLARS DRIVING A RESURGENCE

Patience is a virtue when rebuilding a club. But so, too, is having the right people in place.

Cynics will point to the talent the Lions have sourced from father-son recruits, with the Ashcrofts and Jaspa Fletcher outstanding prospects set to shine for a decade or more, as a reason for their rise.

The northern academies have also drawn fire, with Brisbane’s co-captain Harris Andrews among those to graduate from the developmental pathway and then star in the AFL.

It is worth noting the academies are part of a long-term strategy to strengthen the code in the northern states, with the success evident in the number of participants in the north. It would be folly to dilute them.

For the first time, Queensland will surpass Western Australia to become the second-highest state in terms of participants behind Victoria, with officials in the southeast corridor of the Sunshine State desperately seeking more green land in order to cater to a demand that grows every year.

But back to Brisbane and those key pillars across the club, with Brown praising the roles played by several significant figures.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine (the magnitude of the turnaround and) credit goes to a lot of people,” he said.

“Obviously ‘Fages’ has done an amazing job and Justin Leppitsch before that when he started playing the youngsters. Greg Swann showed amazing leadership, (so too) Andrew Wellington, the chairman, and Danny Daly (the football boss).

“The pillars of your club in terms of your off-field leadership need to be really strong and really good characters. It’s a good lesson for all clubs. That is why the Lions have been able to be successful and it’s translated onto the field. It doesn’t work the other way round.”

In sourcing Fagan, who had never played football at a national level but had a rich history in Tasmania prior to stints with Melbourne and Hawthorn, the Lions opted for a teacher as much as a tactician as senior coach.

Fagan was able to work with younger talents including Ashcroft and Cameron Rayner, among a crop of top draftees, and develop them into the premiership-winning match-winners that they are today.

But Brisbane was also resourceful. Dayne Zorko was overlooked in several drafts before getting a shot with the Lions. Oscar McInerney too. Callum Ah Chee was given a second chance. And Lachie Neale was lured away from Fremantle, where he was already a star.

Wellington believes the club has benefited from strong leadership on-field as well, with Zorko growing pride in this crop of Lions as skipper before slotting in under the co-captains Andrews and Neale following a handover.

Lynch also identified the recruitment of Josh Dunkley as a win for the culture, saying this week he had been told the former Bulldog could well have become captain had he arrived at Brisbane earlier in his career, so strong has his influence been.

Wellington, who grew up in Western Australia but has been a member of the Lions since 1995, joined the board early last decade and became the club’s chairman in 2017.

Asked whether he could have envisaged a time when the club would have 75,000 members, he said extrapolating aspirations into reality is far from a certainty, irrespective of the diligence shown across different parts of the club.

“It’s a bit like that classic, I think, Bill Gates saying that you tend to overestimate what you can do in one or two years, but underestimate what you might do in 10,” he said.

“There’s probably a bit of that about this, because it didn’t happen overnight. Obviously it’s taken quite a while, but now you see the Lions as a product firmly established in the southeast Queensland market, and I’d say broader than that as well.

“I mean, I think our Victorian membership has grown as well. I don’t have the exact numbers, but our interest in Victoria is growing. We had a family day eight to 10 weeks ago in Melbourne and there was just a fantastic turnout with a lot of young kids in Lions gear.

“We’ve played finals seven years in a row now and I think we have captured the attention of a lot of those kids who are not necessarily bound by geography. So you couldn’t have foreseen it but I’m glad it’s happened.”

CODE WARS AND THE OLYMPIC RINGS

With the Lions in another Grand Final and the Broncos within two wins of winning their first NRL title since 2006, the ‘old chestnut’ regarding code wars has been raised again this week.

While the AFL is flying in Queensland, with the ascension of the Suns into the finals for the first time helping to drive a significant rise in coverage this year, Brown knows the reality.

Rugby league remains the main code in Queensland. But the AFL is tracking strongly, as the Lions are proving with attendances and sponsorship dollars, along with membership and participation growth.

“The Broncos will always be the biggest club, but the Brisbane Lions are right up there in terms of the recognition they receive. They’ve really been able to get their own space, in a mainstream sense, because of all the hard work done in the last decade,” he said.

“There was a lot of momentum lost after the downfall of the club following the early 2000s premierships — a downfall in all aspects, not just on the field. But they’ve done an amazing job just to recover from that and solidify the club as a mainstream sport alongside the Broncos.”

As Wellington noted, there is more than enough space for both codes to thrive, which is scarcely surprising in a growing city bequeathed global recognition through the right to host the 2032 Olympic Games.

“I’m going to let others go down the AFL versus NRL path and I get that there’s competition for sponsors and there’s competition between the broadcasters around which product is going to give them the biggest bang for buck,” he said.

“I get all of that, but at the grassroots and in the professional space, there are plenty of supporters and plenty of talent for both. But I think it does demonstrate that both teams can do well and not suffer.

“Even with the Broncos in a prelim on Sunday, we’re still getting plenty of coverage, though it’ll get a bit squishy towards the back end of the week when they’re talking about both, but we’re still getting coverage.

“The Broncos have had a good year, obviously, and we’ve still had a number of sellouts at the Gabba. So if anything, I think it actually creates a bit of extra interest, because it’s all about Brisbane. And at the moment, people are cheering on both teams.”

Wellington points to the fact Brisbane had an equal seat at the table alongside Queensland Cricket as pivotal stakeholders regarding the Victoria Park Stadium to be built for the 2032 Olympics but then shared by the Lions and Bulls into the future.

He doubts that would have happened without the sustained success that has led to the Lions holding significant economic sway in the city, a point also made by Lynch when it comes to the respect Brisbane has garnered in Queensland.

“Brisbane almost had one team in each of the major codes (when I first arrived in the 1990s),” Lynch said.

“Now there’s a few more teams around there, with the Dolphins out at Redcliffe in rugby league and the basketball up and going as well. I reckon it’s a bit of a unique city like that and there’s a transient component of the supporter base that enjoys watching who’s going well.

“But I think there is a real respect for what each of the clubs do, and I think, a growing respect for the Brisbane Lions and what they’ve been able to do after some tough times in two different eras, but also being able to get themselves back to the very top and enjoy sustained success.”

SUSTAINING THE PRIDE OF THE LIONS

Maintaining the roar power is clearly the key to success in Queensland and Brisbane looks to be in good shape in the men’s competition. But the AFLW side faces more of a challenge to keep their streak of successive grand finals intact.

They currently sit in seventh position ahead of a home game in Springfield tomorrow that will see Anderson play her 100th game on the same weekend Crow Ebony Marinoff becomes the first woman to reach the milestone.

A big crowd is expected for the occasion, with the Lions AFL team to return to Brighton Homes Arena late on Sunday.

But irrespective of how the Lions fare in Saturday’s Grand Final, the club will regroup for the 2026 season confident they have a nucleus to be back in the mix again next September.

It is a confidence born from fact, for more than one-third of the 22 which defeated Collingwood in last Saturday night’s preliminary final were aged 22 or younger, with three of them teenagers.

Geelong may have set the template, but the Lions are determined to run with it long-term, Wellington said.

“When you think about what we’ve set ourselves as an objective to be consistently competitive, you come away from that preliminary final thinking: ‘Well, we’ve given ourselves a shot this year, but we’ve also set ourselves up for the future, hopefully,’” Wellington said.