Why the once-dominant club is struggling and looking like a waning team

Brisbane will be the best wild card team

Seeing is different from seeing. You may see something, but the image may confuse you. We see Brisbane fading before our eyes but we can’t believe the picture.

Brisbane has earned the right to doubt what we see. They have gained the expectation that this is just a temporary detour and that they will click. We’re getting out of the blocks a little slower. They time their runs through September. The descriptions seem like simple abbreviations coming from a commentator’s mouth.

We were waiting for them to click. I expect them to routinely win on home soil once again. I expect them to tear apart a good team and look like Brisbane again.

They are currently in ninth place and face the prospect of qualifying for the finals after the completion of half a season, driven by the AFL marketing thought bubble. They would be the ultimate wild card team that no one would want to play in a hopeless round.

The Lions now look less like the runaway team that has won the last two flags and more like a languishing team that has been in the preliminary finals or better in five of the last six years. Although they are not old, they look tired. They look worn out. They seem to have lost their hunger and edge.

The margins are small if any team wins the flag and those margins are now hurting the Lions. They are a good team that has suffered from playing more games than others for the last six years.

A starving side doesn’t have a quarter like Brisbane had last week. Gained the biggest third quarter score in VFL/AFL history to GWS. In the last three defeats, the opponent collected a total of 386 points. They have previously been excellent at denying turnover scores, finishing fourth last year but finishing 14th this year.

When you look at their six losses on the season, they conceded 117.5 points per game, the worst of any team other than the West Coast Eagles. They haven’t conceded a goal at this rate since 2017 under Chris Fagan.

Fagan said if you don’t play with sustained effort, you’re vulnerable. And Brisbane is vulnerable. It hurts them defensively.

This is not just a lack of labor, there is also a lack of personnel. Having Harris Andrews on the field masks the fact that he is dealing with bad knee issues and playing below average every week. Jack Payne tore his kneecap in round 14 last year and has not been seen since and there is no timeframe for when he will return. Okay, they won a flag without him, but last year other things were going well, but not now.

Brandon Starcevich suffered a concussion and then left for the West Coast. Ryan Lester has not played the last few weeks and will miss another month with a calf injury. Dayne Zorko had a quad before the Geelong game and is currently out.

They saw Cal Ah Chee walk to Adelaide in vain and after years of injury trouble, Kiddy Coleman was injured once again, Eric Hipwood is still out and Oscar Allen arrived to nurse bad knees. He now has a foot injury that will miss 9-10 weeks.

In the background, they dealt with the public nature of Lachie Neale’s marital problems, which led to him being handed the captaincy and doubts over his future at the club. Likewise, Zac Bailey’s contract has expired and questions remain as to whether he will leave the club. These might be semi-normal conversations for any club, but when you lose everything becomes a possible contribution.

Hugh McCluggage’s decline in form was the steepest and most confusing. What was last year’s all-Aussie, this year is in an incomprehensible funk. He had three handballs, 0 points, 0 steals and 0 tackles at halftime on Saturday. From year to year their numbers have decreased alarmingly. If there is an injury he is carrying or another problem that the club has not said.

Although Will Ashcroft’s numbers did not drop dramatically compared to last year, his influence has worn off and he has lost his advantage.

These can all be fixed, but this is not a pre-season, but a season that feels like the culmination of seven seasons of grind and the price of staying high.

What we’re seeing is different from the vision we had in our minds of what this team still is.

Common sense under scrutiny

It’s really surprising that it took this long. Just five weeks ago the AFL made a decisive crackdown on common sense in which goal reviews were missing one key ingredient: common sense. Damn, everything was going so well.

At the time, this meant acknowledging a stupid mistake by the goalkeeper by allowing play to continue for more than half a minute and saying “Hey guys, we think there’s a score there, can we go back in now?” So it was a pleasingly quick response by the league. “What were you thinking? You can’t last that long,” the AFL correctly said.

But then they overcorrected and used the ability to speak up and tell someone that an error might have been made in the ARC.

From that moment in the St Kilda-West Coast game the AFL removed the ARC’s ability to interfere and nullify the score. Like a child at the adult dinner table, they are told to speak only when spoken to by adults. As my colleague Pete Ryan presciently described at the time, this was a reaction, not a solution.

Frankly, Geelong’s goal, which was called the point on Friday night, should have prompted the goal or on-field umpires to call for a review. They didn’t, and it was immediately obvious that a mistake had been made. But now ARC has been denied the opportunity to tell anyone. This is not the kind of common sense the AFL was looking for when making its final decision on the breakout.

Farmer Fraser

Josh Fraser showed a self-awareness rare in an industry full of egomaniacs. “I’m not ready,” he said. Nobody says this. Very few people do this.

Now it’s turning into something Brian’s Life Skit where the crowd corrects him: “Only the true messiah can deny his own divinity”.

Fraser is no messiah, or even a very naughty boy, but a farmer-dragger from Mansfield by way of Collingwood and the Gold Coast. And it remains a farmer’s realism that a flood will be followed by drought, that a good crop only means a bad crop will follow.

He is the anti-James Hird in this sense; He is a man who has slowly and deliberately built up his apprenticeship in the VFL and development roles and who says he is the answer and now disdains those who encourage him to push on.

What Fraser told Carlton was warm honesty and reassurance that things were not as bad as they thought. The bones sit in an unfinished list, so the next trainer starts with nothing. The transition game remains an issue for the staff, but it is not as big of an issue as one might think after a few position changes and a resurgent uncompromising attitude to hunting, pressuring and creating turnovers.

The Brett Ratten keeper-turned-coach experience (he was rewarded with the top job after failing to win any games as a keeper) or the David Teague Train experience, which now sounds more like the 1990s electronica album Carlton, won’t be so easily seduced over the next few months. But so is Fraser.

The most encouraging thing a new coach will see is Patrick Cripps’ late strike to save the game at the weekend. Cripps has never been a good header and his goal kicks are questionable, as Sam Walsh, amused by his captain’s high strike, said after the game.

If Cripps can develop this part of his game reliably, like Paddy Dangerfield, he can be an effective third forward target and goalkeeper. If he can prove he can shift his balance 60-40 forward in midfield, this will not only fundamentally change his game, but will also help reshape the Carlton midfield (and forward threat) quickly and deeply; Fraser has shown that they need to accept they need to change, Carlton know they need to change the mix of their midfield. Cripps’ match-winning mark and goal may have shown them a way to do it.

Michael Sellwood how beautiful you are

Even Luke Beveridge admitted the risks weren’t quite the same, but the quality of the player wasn’t in question either. Michael Sellwood saved the game for the Dogs when he floated over the huddle to make an outstanding clutch. It was a Leo Barry moment. Sort of. Pack marks of any kind have become rare enough, but when picked up by a young player who defends himself in front of a packed stadium and wins the game for his team, it becomes Barry worthy.

It was a small moment in a catalog of small moments for a player who is compiling a case as an emerging talent.

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