ZoBlitz
The Ghost Who Walks
- Moderator
- #1
Oh man, is it preview time already?
So what normally happens is that my previews are usually around mid-season and in the last three seasons by that stage any early season optimism has died so I don’t feel too bad about spending 90% of the preview making fun of Roos/Lyon and making random pop culture references/adding TV show gifs. I also don’t feel too bad about telling dlanod that “I’ve been busy at work” as an excuse of why it’s inevitably posted late on Wednesday night, instead of the real reason that I’ve been wasting time on YouTube and playing 30-year-old Sega Master System games.
But the reality is that through the history of Fremantle-Brisbane Lions games, there hasn’t been many games that have been “important”. By that I mean, there haven’t been many games where both teams have been inside or around the eight coming into the game. Instead the games have mostly been good sides beating up on cellar dwellers. I had a look through the historical records and out of the 27 games between the two sides, only in three games have both Fremantle and Brisbane been inside the eight coming into the game as well another game where it was first versus ninth. When you consider one of those games was in 2010 where we had won the first four and then collapsed and the other games were over a three-year period between 2002 and 2004, this perhaps shows that we don’t have the most storied rivalry with Fremantle.
Geeze, surely something vaguely interesting has happened in Fremantle-Brisbane games in the last 22 years?
No.
Well ok, maybe there has been, but do I really want to pad out my preview with some unrelated historical background?
Oh great, here we go…
ZoBlitz’s List Of Vaguely Interesting Things That Happened in Fremantle-Brisbane Games Since 1997
Round 8, 1997 – Loss from a kick after the siren plus Northey and Voss losing their nut at the umpires post-game
(45:39 minutes in to see the last five minutes or so)
After the Bears made the preliminary finals in 1996, the merged Brisbane Lions struggled at the start of 1997 sitting 1 win-6 losses after seven games while Fremantle were chugging along inside the eight at that point. The Bears/Fitzroy record at Subiaco wasn’t flash with Fitzroy never winning over there in five games and the Bears only first breaking through for a win in 1996 after five straight losses. We’d also been belted by West Coast at home in the last round. If we had the “experience watch” around in 1997, you’d see that we had about 1050 more games of experience than Fremantle in the two listed sides.
Our accurate kicking kept the game close but the real flash point came in the last five minutes of the game when Voss was pinged for deliberate out of bounds in defensive 50. This decision was more “iffy” than it would be today as players could normally get away with thumping the ball over the line as long as they gained some territory. Freo missed the resulting shot for goal but eventually the ball was marked by Quenton Leach inside fifty before the siren, who went back and slotted the goal.
After the game Vossy and Northey got stuck into the umpires and apparently two of the umpires were relegated to the reserves for the next week.
Round 11, 1998 – Vossy breaks his leg and Northey loses his job
Horrific injury to add to a horrific year where we were sitting at 2-8 at this point and Fremantle ended up beating us by 71 points. My memory of this game is one of the commentators talking about how Vossy’s injury might help galvanise the team into rallying in a game that we were struggling. Nothing like losing your best player and captain for a significant period of time to get the team going, I say.
This was also the end for Northey who had taken over from Robert Walls in 1996. Northey had attended an extraordinary board meeting prior to the Freo game where he had to provide reasons why he should be retained as coach. Chairman Noel Gordon had also talked to the players about his performance. Northey managed to survive this meeting but the drubbing by Fremantle heralded the end of his reign, with Roger Merrett taking over for the rest of the season.
Round 20, 1999 – Lions win by 114 points and set club’s biggest win
I’d argue that our football in 1999 was some of the most entertaining to watch in our club’s history, on par with our premiership seasons. Leigh had come on board as coach and set about re-shaping the side, sending inconsistent forwards Jason Akermanis and Justin Leppitsch down into defence and trading for attacking back flanker Adam Heuskes (and some other less impressive players; I’m still baffled that David Calthorpe ended up playing nine games for us that season). Watching our players stream from defence to set up attacking movements was beautiful to watch.
We had two 100+ point victories that season and this was one of them and was our biggest win as the Brisbane Lions at the time. We’d kicked 25 goals to half time and were already up by 113 until we gave them a break in the second half. This is still Fremantle’s highest score conceded. Jarrod Molloy kicked five straight and we had fourteen individual goal kickers. I wish I had a copy of this game.
Round 5, 2001 – Lions kick 13.6 in the last quarter to get over a persistent Fremantle side
I remember attending this game on a Sunday afternoon and it felt like a fairly uninteresting affair in which we were trailing by 9 points at three quarter time against a not particularly good Fremantle side. Ten minutes into the last we were trailing by 15 points and then things went nuts.
Akermanis was shifted into the middle in the last quarter and with Beau McDonald getting on top in the ruck, the Lions started to get a run on and in twenty minutes we had kicked 11 goals to make it 13 goals for the quarter. This is the only copy of a game I ever bought from that rip-off of a service, “Name a Game”.
And after this, apart from Fremantle running over us to win by three points in 2003 when both sides were sitting in the eight and Browny getting a knee to the face in 2011, not much happened until the Ross Lyon years. And then nothing interesting continued to happen, but in a more defensive fashion. But eventually…
Round 12, 2017 – We finally beat a Ross Lyon coached team after 9 straight losses
Since Ross Lyon began coaching and ruining football, we’ve struggled to beat his sides regardless of who he coached or who coached us. We started off well enough against him to win the first two games against his Saints back in 2007 and 2008 but it’s been boring belting after boring belting since then.
But in 2017 we turned the tables with Dayne Beams and Dayne Zorko dominating and Lewy Taylor kicking four. We also kept Fyfe to 18 possessions which was his lowest for the season.
So enough boring history, why should I care about this game?
This is a big one. We’re currently sitting 6-3, a position we haven’t been since 2004 and we’re heading towards the arguably “softer” part of our draw. Picking up a win away from home against a Fremantle that’s sitting in 9th could really setup the rest of our season. Fremantle would be desperate for a win after three straight losses, the loss against Adelaide in that run showing the essence of Ross Lyon coached games in that both sides struggled to score, and it was mind-numbing to watch.
Should I be worried; are Fremantle any good?
Well… it’s been hard to tell who’s good this season. Fremantle have beaten GWS, belted North and beaten middling sides like the Saints and the Bulldogs but they’ve also lost to the Gold Coast Suns and a schizophrenic Essendon side. Their biggest loss has been 25 points against Richmond, so they haven’t been blasted off the park. This game will be a good test for them and they do have the advantage of playing at home.
Fremantle currently have the second-best defensive record in the league this season but only the eleventh best attack which is the reverse of the Lions who have the fourth best attack and fourteenth best defence.
A real clash of styles then?
In that one side tries to play football and the other side doesn’t, yes. It could be a real struggle with Freo trying to strangle our attack but being unable to put many points on the board themselves. This could be a struggle.
Is it a one-man show over at Freo still (especially with Neale gone)?
Fyfe is still Fyfe, a contested ball-winning machine who for some reason never seems to be suspended for continually whacking people.
Mundy seems to be having a solid season and Hill and Walters have been ticking along. Being generous I’m not sure Hogan has made the sort of impact that Freo were expecting, apart from helping with cigarette and booze sales over there. They seem to be putting games into their younger guys like Cerra and Brayshaw but patience will need to be shown before they consistently influence games. They’ve lost a few of their talls to injury this year as well, with Taberner being added to the list this week.
Enough about Freo, what’s the story with us?
It’s been an amazing ride to start the season, despite a disappointing loss in a game we should have won against the Bulldogs and a couple of non-competitive efforts against Collingwood and Essendon. We’ve also beaten three sides currently sitting in the eight (including the reigning premiers) in very solid performances. And while last week was perhaps closer in the end than it should have been it was still a gritty effort to hold on against a quality side like Adelaide.
That Lachie Neale’s not too bad eh?
Neale has been instrumental in our improvement this year; he’s a clearance and contested ball winning machine. I’d argue he’s one of the top handballers in the game today with his ability to setup play from stoppages. His five minutes of magic in the third quarter of the Gold Coast game where he set up two goals and then kicked one himself was just glorious to watch. He may be close to leading the Brownlow currently. There’re just not enough superlatives that I can use to describe Neale’s football this season.
Neale’s arrival would be helping out Zorko, I bet?
Damn straight. Now that Zorko doesn’t continually have to worry about being the first player tagged, he’s become much more dangerous without needing to get a whole lot of the ball. Champion Data apparently rate him currently as the most dangerous player in the competition in terms of “chain involvements to score ratio” which suits his abilities. Zorko is averaging about seven inside 50s a game this season which is a career high for him as well. He also hasn’t whacked anyone off the ball (touch wood).
Is Richy in All-Australian form playing in defence?
He’d be close. Richy has played well in defence in recent years but this is the first season where it feels like everything has completely clicked for him. It’s not just his quality disposal but his reading of the play from defence has been excellent whether he’s intercepting a mark or getting to a contest to spoil. Rich’s best total of contested marks for a season is six (five times) and he’s already on six contested marks for this season. Very consistent, very safe down back.
McCluggage keeps getting better and better, doesn’t he?
He’s still not able to be consistently damaging over a whole game but those quarter where he strings it together are just amazing to watch. His fourteen disposal first quarter against the Bulldogs was poetry in motion, with him just being involved in everything. The Bulldogs clamping down on him after that and our subsequent drop in performance is indicative of how important he was in that game. He also has the knack of finding space to kick important goals. Just watch out when it all clicks together for a whole game.
Ok, this is all sounding too good to be true; this is the Brisbane Lions after all. We must have some issues going on.
No thrown kebabs but our kicking for goal has been, and let’s be kind, “inconsistent”. McStay, Cameron and Hipwood have all had their yips in front of goal this season with some appalling easy misses in a few games while also dobbing goals from about the third row back in the crowd. Cameron in particular seems to be struggling for confidence when lining up the easy shots for goal. Maybe he needs to wear a blindfold while lining up for a set-shot, ala Dodgeball.
We’ve also struggled to play consistently for an entire game, despite winning regularly this season. It’s perhaps only cost us one game so far this year but it is something we need to work on.
Prediction?
I’m more optimistic about this game than I would have been in previous years considering we’re playing away against a side just outside the eight, but we’ve shown we can match it with teams at that level. I think the game will be a low scoring slog, but we’ll be able to do enough to come out on top.
Lions by 9.
It may be me, but it feels like you’ve made a lot less Ross Lyon jokes compared to the previous season’s preview?
Really? That doesn’t sound like me. Maybe I’m just growing up…
So what normally happens is that my previews are usually around mid-season and in the last three seasons by that stage any early season optimism has died so I don’t feel too bad about spending 90% of the preview making fun of Roos/Lyon and making random pop culture references/adding TV show gifs. I also don’t feel too bad about telling dlanod that “I’ve been busy at work” as an excuse of why it’s inevitably posted late on Wednesday night, instead of the real reason that I’ve been wasting time on YouTube and playing 30-year-old Sega Master System games.
But the reality is that through the history of Fremantle-Brisbane Lions games, there hasn’t been many games that have been “important”. By that I mean, there haven’t been many games where both teams have been inside or around the eight coming into the game. Instead the games have mostly been good sides beating up on cellar dwellers. I had a look through the historical records and out of the 27 games between the two sides, only in three games have both Fremantle and Brisbane been inside the eight coming into the game as well another game where it was first versus ninth. When you consider one of those games was in 2010 where we had won the first four and then collapsed and the other games were over a three-year period between 2002 and 2004, this perhaps shows that we don’t have the most storied rivalry with Fremantle.
Geeze, surely something vaguely interesting has happened in Fremantle-Brisbane games in the last 22 years?
No.
Well ok, maybe there has been, but do I really want to pad out my preview with some unrelated historical background?
Oh great, here we go…
ZoBlitz’s List Of Vaguely Interesting Things That Happened in Fremantle-Brisbane Games Since 1997
Round 8, 1997 – Loss from a kick after the siren plus Northey and Voss losing their nut at the umpires post-game
(45:39 minutes in to see the last five minutes or so)
After the Bears made the preliminary finals in 1996, the merged Brisbane Lions struggled at the start of 1997 sitting 1 win-6 losses after seven games while Fremantle were chugging along inside the eight at that point. The Bears/Fitzroy record at Subiaco wasn’t flash with Fitzroy never winning over there in five games and the Bears only first breaking through for a win in 1996 after five straight losses. We’d also been belted by West Coast at home in the last round. If we had the “experience watch” around in 1997, you’d see that we had about 1050 more games of experience than Fremantle in the two listed sides.
Our accurate kicking kept the game close but the real flash point came in the last five minutes of the game when Voss was pinged for deliberate out of bounds in defensive 50. This decision was more “iffy” than it would be today as players could normally get away with thumping the ball over the line as long as they gained some territory. Freo missed the resulting shot for goal but eventually the ball was marked by Quenton Leach inside fifty before the siren, who went back and slotted the goal.
After the game Vossy and Northey got stuck into the umpires and apparently two of the umpires were relegated to the reserves for the next week.
Round 11, 1998 – Vossy breaks his leg and Northey loses his job
Horrific injury to add to a horrific year where we were sitting at 2-8 at this point and Fremantle ended up beating us by 71 points. My memory of this game is one of the commentators talking about how Vossy’s injury might help galvanise the team into rallying in a game that we were struggling. Nothing like losing your best player and captain for a significant period of time to get the team going, I say.
This was also the end for Northey who had taken over from Robert Walls in 1996. Northey had attended an extraordinary board meeting prior to the Freo game where he had to provide reasons why he should be retained as coach. Chairman Noel Gordon had also talked to the players about his performance. Northey managed to survive this meeting but the drubbing by Fremantle heralded the end of his reign, with Roger Merrett taking over for the rest of the season.
Round 20, 1999 – Lions win by 114 points and set club’s biggest win
I’d argue that our football in 1999 was some of the most entertaining to watch in our club’s history, on par with our premiership seasons. Leigh had come on board as coach and set about re-shaping the side, sending inconsistent forwards Jason Akermanis and Justin Leppitsch down into defence and trading for attacking back flanker Adam Heuskes (and some other less impressive players; I’m still baffled that David Calthorpe ended up playing nine games for us that season). Watching our players stream from defence to set up attacking movements was beautiful to watch.
We had two 100+ point victories that season and this was one of them and was our biggest win as the Brisbane Lions at the time. We’d kicked 25 goals to half time and were already up by 113 until we gave them a break in the second half. This is still Fremantle’s highest score conceded. Jarrod Molloy kicked five straight and we had fourteen individual goal kickers. I wish I had a copy of this game.
Round 5, 2001 – Lions kick 13.6 in the last quarter to get over a persistent Fremantle side
I remember attending this game on a Sunday afternoon and it felt like a fairly uninteresting affair in which we were trailing by 9 points at three quarter time against a not particularly good Fremantle side. Ten minutes into the last we were trailing by 15 points and then things went nuts.
Akermanis was shifted into the middle in the last quarter and with Beau McDonald getting on top in the ruck, the Lions started to get a run on and in twenty minutes we had kicked 11 goals to make it 13 goals for the quarter. This is the only copy of a game I ever bought from that rip-off of a service, “Name a Game”.
And after this, apart from Fremantle running over us to win by three points in 2003 when both sides were sitting in the eight and Browny getting a knee to the face in 2011, not much happened until the Ross Lyon years. And then nothing interesting continued to happen, but in a more defensive fashion. But eventually…
Round 12, 2017 – We finally beat a Ross Lyon coached team after 9 straight losses
Since Ross Lyon began coaching and ruining football, we’ve struggled to beat his sides regardless of who he coached or who coached us. We started off well enough against him to win the first two games against his Saints back in 2007 and 2008 but it’s been boring belting after boring belting since then.
But in 2017 we turned the tables with Dayne Beams and Dayne Zorko dominating and Lewy Taylor kicking four. We also kept Fyfe to 18 possessions which was his lowest for the season.
So enough boring history, why should I care about this game?
This is a big one. We’re currently sitting 6-3, a position we haven’t been since 2004 and we’re heading towards the arguably “softer” part of our draw. Picking up a win away from home against a Fremantle that’s sitting in 9th could really setup the rest of our season. Fremantle would be desperate for a win after three straight losses, the loss against Adelaide in that run showing the essence of Ross Lyon coached games in that both sides struggled to score, and it was mind-numbing to watch.
Should I be worried; are Fremantle any good?
Well… it’s been hard to tell who’s good this season. Fremantle have beaten GWS, belted North and beaten middling sides like the Saints and the Bulldogs but they’ve also lost to the Gold Coast Suns and a schizophrenic Essendon side. Their biggest loss has been 25 points against Richmond, so they haven’t been blasted off the park. This game will be a good test for them and they do have the advantage of playing at home.
Fremantle currently have the second-best defensive record in the league this season but only the eleventh best attack which is the reverse of the Lions who have the fourth best attack and fourteenth best defence.
A real clash of styles then?
In that one side tries to play football and the other side doesn’t, yes. It could be a real struggle with Freo trying to strangle our attack but being unable to put many points on the board themselves. This could be a struggle.
Is it a one-man show over at Freo still (especially with Neale gone)?
Fyfe is still Fyfe, a contested ball-winning machine who for some reason never seems to be suspended for continually whacking people.
Mundy seems to be having a solid season and Hill and Walters have been ticking along. Being generous I’m not sure Hogan has made the sort of impact that Freo were expecting, apart from helping with cigarette and booze sales over there. They seem to be putting games into their younger guys like Cerra and Brayshaw but patience will need to be shown before they consistently influence games. They’ve lost a few of their talls to injury this year as well, with Taberner being added to the list this week.
Enough about Freo, what’s the story with us?
It’s been an amazing ride to start the season, despite a disappointing loss in a game we should have won against the Bulldogs and a couple of non-competitive efforts against Collingwood and Essendon. We’ve also beaten three sides currently sitting in the eight (including the reigning premiers) in very solid performances. And while last week was perhaps closer in the end than it should have been it was still a gritty effort to hold on against a quality side like Adelaide.
That Lachie Neale’s not too bad eh?
Neale has been instrumental in our improvement this year; he’s a clearance and contested ball winning machine. I’d argue he’s one of the top handballers in the game today with his ability to setup play from stoppages. His five minutes of magic in the third quarter of the Gold Coast game where he set up two goals and then kicked one himself was just glorious to watch. He may be close to leading the Brownlow currently. There’re just not enough superlatives that I can use to describe Neale’s football this season.
Neale’s arrival would be helping out Zorko, I bet?
Damn straight. Now that Zorko doesn’t continually have to worry about being the first player tagged, he’s become much more dangerous without needing to get a whole lot of the ball. Champion Data apparently rate him currently as the most dangerous player in the competition in terms of “chain involvements to score ratio” which suits his abilities. Zorko is averaging about seven inside 50s a game this season which is a career high for him as well. He also hasn’t whacked anyone off the ball (touch wood).
Is Richy in All-Australian form playing in defence?
He’d be close. Richy has played well in defence in recent years but this is the first season where it feels like everything has completely clicked for him. It’s not just his quality disposal but his reading of the play from defence has been excellent whether he’s intercepting a mark or getting to a contest to spoil. Rich’s best total of contested marks for a season is six (five times) and he’s already on six contested marks for this season. Very consistent, very safe down back.
McCluggage keeps getting better and better, doesn’t he?
He’s still not able to be consistently damaging over a whole game but those quarter where he strings it together are just amazing to watch. His fourteen disposal first quarter against the Bulldogs was poetry in motion, with him just being involved in everything. The Bulldogs clamping down on him after that and our subsequent drop in performance is indicative of how important he was in that game. He also has the knack of finding space to kick important goals. Just watch out when it all clicks together for a whole game.
Ok, this is all sounding too good to be true; this is the Brisbane Lions after all. We must have some issues going on.
No thrown kebabs but our kicking for goal has been, and let’s be kind, “inconsistent”. McStay, Cameron and Hipwood have all had their yips in front of goal this season with some appalling easy misses in a few games while also dobbing goals from about the third row back in the crowd. Cameron in particular seems to be struggling for confidence when lining up the easy shots for goal. Maybe he needs to wear a blindfold while lining up for a set-shot, ala Dodgeball.
We’ve also struggled to play consistently for an entire game, despite winning regularly this season. It’s perhaps only cost us one game so far this year but it is something we need to work on.
Prediction?
I’m more optimistic about this game than I would have been in previous years considering we’re playing away against a side just outside the eight, but we’ve shown we can match it with teams at that level. I think the game will be a low scoring slog, but we’ll be able to do enough to come out on top.
Lions by 9.
It may be me, but it feels like you’ve made a lot less Ross Lyon jokes compared to the previous season’s preview?
Really? That doesn’t sound like me. Maybe I’m just growing up…
.
