Fly’s Pies’ tactical masterpiece gives Fagan’s Lions the ultimate reality check
This has been coming for a long time.
Since last year’s epic September run, Brisbane have become one of the most dominant comeback teams our game has seen – so brutal have their second halves been, from bulldozing GWS in the semi-final through to last week’s 10-goal Gather Round turnaround, thast they’ve barely needed to rock up before then.
It has been stunning to watch… and also more fragile than it appears.
I wrote last week, after the Lions made mincemeat of a 39-point deficit to steamroll the Western Bulldogs, that this run of giving opponents the jump couldn’t possibly be sustainable. Nor could it end well.
It took just five days for Brisbane to find that out for themselves – once again spotting a sizeable half time lead, this time to Collingwood, the Lions comeback not only never came to fruition, but things actually got even worse from there.
This was a tactical masterpiece from Craig McRae and his Magpies. Systematically, they denied the Lions any semblance of the style in which they play their best footy from start to finish, dominated stoppages, defended space superbly without ball in hand to leave the most menacing ball movement team in footy at a loss as to where to go next, and simply outran them on the counterattack to score goal after goal running inside attacking 50 after forcing the turnover.
It was a win borne of yet more Nick Daicos magnificence, dominating the Lions in midfield so comprehensively a tag was required after half time to try and clamp down on him, then comprehensively outgunning Jarrod Berry and for the second week in a row enabling the rest of the Pies’ midfield to make use of the extra space afforded by all the attention going the superstar’s way.
But this is also the ultimate reality check for Fagan’s Lions, and one that should serve an extremely good team far better than the sort of wins they’ve been racking up to date this season.
If countless wins from half-time deficits have built up a sense of invincibility in the reigning premiers, hopefully this shatters it for their sake. This is an inconsistent team playing inconsistent football, and while their best has been devastating enough to sport them a 5-1 start to the season and give them ample time to fix what needs fixing, you can be the job just became a whole lot harder now that the Pies have set up a blueprint on how to curb their strengths.
With the ball, the Pies’ plan was simple: move the ball quickly, whether from clearance or turnover, deny the Lions any extra numbers behind the ball, and either hit a leading target, or bring the ball to ground for their army of small to wreak havoc.
With a domination of stoppages led by Darcy Cameron’s control of the ruck battle with Oscar McInerney, as well as a well-honed on-ball group featuring the smarts of Steele Sidebottom and Scott Pendlebury, the dazzling skill of Daicos and the key defensive piece in Ned Long’s ferocious tackling pressure and scrappy ball-winning ability, a far more highly regarded Lions midfield group copped their heaviest stoppages hiding since Round 18, 2023.
Losing the clearance count by 10 and the centre clearance numbers by six is one thing: to lose it by this amount to a team whose strengths never lay in contested footy even in their premiership year, having lost the clearance count comfortably more times than they’ve won it since McRae took over as coach in 2022 makes it bigger.
Because what the Pies have lacked in quantity of clearances, they’ve always made up for in quality at their best, ranking second in the league for scores from stoppages compared to their opponents in 2023.
Part of it – who are we kidding, a pretty massive part of it – comes down to the incredible skillset of Daicos, as well as the Pies’ ability to maximise it at every opportunity.
Take this centre bounce in the first quarter: Daicos begins it head-to-head with another young gun in Will Ashcroft, and is given an initial advantage in the form of Mason Cox outdoing Sam Day in the second-ruck duel and tapping it right down his throat.
Most players from this spot would either look to give a handball to a running half-back, or else throw the ball on the boot and try and get it forward: both are things Brisbane defend against exceptionally well.
Daicos is different gravy, though: he has both the speed to get away from Ashcroft’s lunge, and the smarts to subtle draw Hugh McCluggage into the football; credit to Pendlebury, too, for seeing the play unfold quicker than anyone else and going into space of his own, allowing the handball over the top.
For most other teams, it would then be Pendlebury driving the ball inside 50: at the Pies, it’s again Daicos time. Sprinting back past McCluggage and by Pendlebury for the handball receive – one of 19 he’d get for the match as the Magpies repeatedly made sure to get the ball in his hands – he is simply too quick for the Lions star, burning him off with a blistering burst of pace to get clear for an unhurried, unpressured kick inside 50.
Which, of course, is placed ideally to allow Dan McStay a run and jump at the footy, and with some of the most underrated sticky hands in the league, he brings down the mark. Goal Magpies.
God knows how you defend against this, because Brisbane tried running with Berry as a tagger in the third quarter and it made scant difference – in fact, the Pies went 11-5 at clearances for the term, and 4-0 out of the centre. His mix of pace, footy smarts and deadly skill means you either have to pay a major price and sacrifice structure – which both Sydney and the Lions have tried in the last fortnight to their detriment – or simply let him run free. Both come with a terrible risk attached.
He’d finish with 645 metres gained from his 38 disposals – the Lions’ three premier on-ballers, Lachie Neale, Josh Dunkley and McCluggage, would have 681 between them.
Six goals to two from clearances were the result; a clear disaster for last year’s fifth-best team at scoring from stoppages compared to their opponents.
But while the stoppages were where the Pies set the game up, they truly had the Lions’ measure in open play. Both defensively and offensively, the reigning premiers finished as a team utterly bereft of ideas.
The Lions are a high-kick, high-mark team, controlling the ball until there comes a time to attack the corridor: when they do go, when that switch is flipped, it’s incredibly tough to stop.
The Pies, though, had no intentions of denying the Lions their usual glut of marks. What they did curb was where they were directed.
Time after time, the Lions half-backs searched for passing options in the corridor, and time after time they were forced sideways, backwards, or wide to the boundary. Hemmed in at all times, the Pies’ defence formed a latticework through the central corridor, guarding space and ensuring every kick was fraught with danger if turned over.
This is what Darcy Wilmot had to face late in the third quarter, with the Lions 29 points down and desperate for the sort of freewheeling, end-to-end goal that has sparked so many of their comebacks in recent times.
The key of the set-up is it’s denying Wilmot an easy kick: for all their damage, the Lions usually take minimal risks when going through the corridor. They lead into space for 20-metre chip passes, all the while taking the ball forward and then later fanning out.
Wilmot has two free options right in the middle of the centre square if he’s bold enough: but he’s unwilling to run that gauntlet with the Pies so devastatingly fast on the counterattack. And the space the Lions usually go for – 20 metres and directly in front of him – is guarded like a Roman Emperor.
In the end, he has to go wide to the boundary, allowing the Pies to hem him in, and Darcy Cameron, the best intercept-marking ruckman in the game, to get to where the next kick surely must go and stop the play dead.
The most telling part of all of it was how rattled it made Wilmot: gesticulating furiously at teammates to give him an option as he looks to pass, he dithers, pulls out of attempted cross-field passes and everything in between for a good ten seconds before going wide. For a guy who has done little but win since making his debut in the 2022 finals series, that spoke volumes of the pressure the Pies’ system was putting on a team accustomed to, by that point in the match, having things well and truly on their terms.
Yet when the Lions did run that gauntlet and try and take the game on, the Pies were ready: hell, it was an open trap to be walked straight into.
When Dayne Zorko marks at half-back early in the third quarter, the Magpies’ structure springs into action. The corridor is sealed off, passing options limited to the boundary only, which doesn’t appeal to the reigning All-Australian half-back in the least.
He opts to try something different, taking the game on with run and carry. With James Tunstill ignored as the wide outlet option, he takes two bounces, assesses his options, and then looks to drive the ball long up the wing – already a win for the Pies, who have forced Zorko to risk losing the ball in order to gain territory.
But so long has he waited for an option to present, so long has he delayed that kick hoping for something to materialise, that it has allowed Bobby Hill to close in. And with perfect timing, just as Zorko is putting leather to leather, he pounces, causing the kick to slew wildly off the boot and straight into Collingwood hands.
From here, the Pies execute their major advantage over the Lions: leg speed. They are chock full of it, and not afraid to use it.
It’s Brody Mihocek who gathers and, with a touch of rush of blood to the head but aiming to try and catch the Lions’ defence on an unexpected turnover, bangs the ball inside 50.
It’s tailor made for Jack Payne – on another day, he’d mark it just as he did so regularly in last week’s win over the Bulldogs – but here, for whatever reason, he misjudges the ball, times his leap wrong, and what should be an uncontested mark suddenly hits the ground.
Jamie Elliott gathers, gives to Dan McStay, and who else receives the next handball but Daicos, whose opponent has been left in the dust some 30 metres away.
Goal. And symbolically at least, game, set and match.
And a result that leaves the reigning champions with plenty of work to do.