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This Thursday night, the Brisbane Lions will mark the 20th anniversary of the second of their hat trick of premierships when they welcome Collingwood to the Gabba in what shapes as an Easter Thursday blockbuster in Bris Vegas.
The Lions were in the midst of a dominant era that saw them rise from wooden spooners in 1998 to premiers just three years later under Leigh Matthews, defeating the previous season’s premiers Essendon in the 2001 grand final.
That was Matthews’ second flag as an AFL coach, after leading the Pies to their famous drought-breaking premiership win (which current Lions AFLW coach Craig Starcevich was a part of) against the Bombers in 1990.
Twelve months on, the northerners qualified for another grand final, this time to take on the Pies. They were coached by Mick Malthouse, who had taken the West Coast Eagles to two flags in 1992 and 1994.
In the lead-up to the grand final, Simon Black won the Brownlow Medal with 25 votes, repeating the feat achieved by his teammate Jason Akermanis, who won it the previous year with 23 votes.
Jason Cloke missed for the Pies after being suspended for striking Tyson Edwards in the preceding preliminary final.
The decider was a war of attrition, with the margin being no greater than single figures for the whole match.
Anthony Rocca booted the only goal of the first quarter to see the Pies lead by six points at the quarter-time break. This ended a streak of 253 VFL/AFL quarters in which the Lions booted at least one major.
The Lions got their first goal only minutes into the second quarter via Shaun Hart, and their continued inaccuracy in the second quarter meant they led by just eight points at half-time, with the Pies refusing to give in.
The arm wrestle continued in the third quarter, with four goals to each side seeing the Lions take a four-point lead into the final change as they looked to successfully defend their 2001 flag.
(Photo by Nick Laham/Getty Images)
A goal to Josh Fraser helped the Pies take a three-point lead midway through the final quarter, before goals to Alastair Lynch and Jason Akermanis got the Lions home by nine points – the biggest margin for the entire match.
Despite the Lions’ victory, it was Pies captain Nathan Buckley who won the Norm Smith Medal as the man of the match. The voting procedure was widely panned post-match as the judges were required to cast their votes by midway through the final quarter.
Buckley, out of respect for his teammates, removed the medal from around his neck after stepping off the podium.
Many believed that had the judges been allowed to cast their votes after the final siren, Michael Voss would’ve won the medal, such was his influence in the latter part of the final quarter when the match was hanging in the balance.
The Norm Smith Medal voting procedure was changed so that the judges would not be required to start voting until after the final siren. Since then, only Chris Judd (in 2005) has won the medal from the losing side. Then he captained the West Coast Eagles to the flag the following season.
The Lions completed their premiership hat trick in 2003, demolishing the Pies by 50 points to cement themselves as the greatest premiership team of the new millennium.
It completed a remarkable turnaround from where the team was five years earlier, when the club, in its second season as a merged entity, finished last on the ladder and failed to attract more than 20,000 fans to any of its home games at the Gabba, which was smaller then.
It also came in a golden period for sport overall in Queensland, with the Brisbane Broncos winning one Super League premiership and three NRL premierships in a ten-year period between 1997 and 2006, and the Brisbane Bullets winning the NBL championship in 2007.
This period of success finally caught up with Leigh Matthews’ side, which crashed from grand finalists in 2004 to also-rans the following year, suffering a record 139-point defeat to St Kilda in the final match of their 2005 season.
With the exception of a finals berth in 2009, the Lions struggled on the field in the 14 years that followed. But under the management of Chris Fagan and David Noble (now Kangaroos coach), the club has rocketed back up the ladder, reaching the finals for three consecutive seasons.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
As for the Pies, three players from that 2002 side – Leon Davis, Alan Didak and Ben Johnson – later played in their 2010 premiership-winning team under Mick Malthouse.
But it was Nick Davis, for whom the 2002 grand final was his last game for the club, that beat them to a premiership first, being part of the Sydney Swans side that saluted in 2005.
This takes us to the present now, where despite their regular-season dominance in recent seasons, the Brisbane Lions have won only one finals match in the past decade, and twice crashed out of the finals in straight sets (2019 and 2021).
In between, the Lions missed out on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to qualify for a grand final at the Gabba when they lost to the Geelong Cats in the preliminary final, denying them the chance to play for a premiership in their very own backyard.
This season, Chris Fagan’s side have again started the season impressively, winning their first three matches including thrashing North Melbourne by 108 points at the Gabba in Round 3. It was their biggest win since Round 16, 2007.
Last week they suffered their first loss of the season in controversial circumstances when they lost to the Cats by ten points, in a near repeat of the corresponding match last year when Zac Bailey was denied a free kick and the chance to kick the match-winning goal after the final siren.
The loss meant that the Lions remain winless at Kardinia Park since 2003.
Meanwhile, Collingwood won their first two matches of the season but have since dropped their past two, giving up a 37-point lead against the Cats to lose by 13 while the demons of the 2018 grand final came back to haunt them against the West Coast Eagles last Saturday night.
A major subplot heading into this Thursday night’s clash will be the fact that current Pies coach Craig McRae will come up against the club with whom he won the hat trick of flags, the last two of which were against the side he is now at the helm of.
(Photo by Mike Owen/Getty Images)
Also on the Pies’ coaching panel is his former triple-premiership-winning teammate and former Lions coach Justin Leppitsch, who reinvented himself in his second stint as an assistant coach at Richmond after being sacked from his post at the Gabba in 2016.
For the Lions, the opportunity to perform on a standalone prime-time stage in front of their home fans comes over 12 months after last year’s Easter Thursday clash was switched from the Gabba to Marvel Stadium in Melbourne due to a snap lockdown in Brisbane.
In that match, Zac Bailey booted the match-winning goal for the Lions after they had started the season with two straight losses, and heaped more pressure on then-Pies coach Nathan Buckley, who departed his post halfway through the season.
In the return clash, which was switched to the Gabba from its original Marvel Stadium venue, the Lions won by 85 points but their lack of finals experience and nervousness meant they crashed out in straight sets for the second time in three years.
Chris Fagan’s side will start favourites in at least six of their next seven matches, with the only potentially tough match in that period being a rare trip to the SCG where the Sydney Swans await in Round 7.
Nine wins from 11 matches leading into a trip to Perth to face Fremantle in Round 12 could set them up for another run to September, during which they’ll have the chance to right the wrongs of past failed finals campaigns and be in contention to claim a first flag since 2003.
As for the Pies, who have a respectable 2-2 record after four rounds, it will be the first time they depart Victoria this season and a win on the road could prove valuable and potentially season-changing as they look to prove the doubters wrong in 2022.
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