Why Couldn’t Brisbane Do It Again?
At this point, Brisbane has the feel of the Oceans movies.
In Ocean’s 11 they were stacked across the board. In Ocean’s 12 they added Julia Roberts to the team. For Brisbane in 2024, that was Levi Ashcroft as well as a fully healthy Will Ashcroft.
In Ocean’s 13 they added Al Pacino or, for Brisbane, Oscar Allen.
They just kept adding and adding and adding. And they stayed successful through their additions.
But, you know, they were movies.
The Lions have to pull their own smash and grab to win three in a row and, almost as impressively, make their fourth straight grand final.
If there’s ever been a team that’s set to do it, it’s Brisbane. Indeed, I’m picking them to win this year’s premiership.
But the case for them is easy. They can click between game-styles like they’re flipping channels and they have stars everywhere.
What about the case against them? That’s what I want to make here.
Note I’m not going to talk about Lachie Neale here. Last year’s Brisbane scandal meant nothing, so I assume this one won’t either. The fact that the Shaggy Defence didn’t work for him in January I don’t think will have any bearing on what happens come September.
Let’s get to it.
- Dayne Zorko is ageing
You can’t make this point clearly enough: Dayne Zorko moving to half back is why Brisbane won the last two premierships. From about 2020 until halfway through 2024, Brisbane was too safe leaving the back half.
Injuries forced Zorko back there, and it was like injecting Tracy Jordan into TGS. He supercharged the whole situation with his willingness to take often insane risks and pull them off. They’ve been running for two years in a row on Tracy to get the answers right in the cash cab and it’s working.
Having Zorko back there is like having Brett Favre with the greenest light imaginable. He has permission from coaches to bite off impossible kicks because he hits them so frequently.
But now, Zorko is heading into his age-36 season. He’s shown no signs of slowing down and has played over 20 games every year since 2013 except 2020 in the shortened season.
But at some point, it has to end.
If it does, there is no Zorko replacement program. Keidean Coleman has played one game in each of the two years and, after revisiting some of his VFL footy last year, looks like he may be hampered by injuries. Even if he’s fully healthy, he seems to have spent the offseason learning to fill Cal Ah Chee’s role so might not even be part of the Zorko replacement plan.
If Coleman isn’t the answer, their other running half back types like Jarrod Berry, Darcy Wilmot, and Jaspa Fletcher are less destructive kickers and more exceptional runners. They benefit from Zorko releasing them with his kicking.
Zorko is the skeleton key that unlocked this team. If he falls away, I am near certain that he’s irreplaceable.
- No midfield ace without Neale
Chris Fagan’s teams have always been heavily reliant on midfield dominance. Indeed, since Lachie Neale arrived in 2019 Brisbane has never been worse than third for clearances.
But, like Zorko, Neale is ageing and has had a 2009 Tiger Woods kind of offseason.
Unlike Zorko, Neale is showing it a bit.
Last year was Neale’s worst contested ball year since 2015 including the shortened games of 2020 and his worst clearance year. He also was injured heading into the Grand Final though, ultimately, he came on at halftime and should have been Norm.
If Neale is significantly hampered by having 10 secretaries and also his calf, Brisbane loses its midfield ace. Having an elite Lachie Neale is like having an elite wide receiver in the NFL. His presence alone knocks everyone else down a peg on the opposition “to stop” list.
Their other top clearance players like McLuggage and Ashcroft benefit significantly from Neale’s dirty work while a player like Josh Dunkley is much better suited to being Neale’s second banana.
He’s Mark Ruffalo more than Daniel-Day-Lewis. An elite number two.
If Neale is finished as an elite player, they lose the most important element of their run and I don’t know how you recover from that.
- Oscar Allen could be a chemistry destroyer
Oscar Allen is a good player, or at least he was last time he played a meaningful football game in 2021.
He’s spent the last five years either being injured or debasing himself on atrocious West Coast teams like he’s Robert De Niro in Dirty Grandpa.
When he was playing real footy, he was more of a contested mark player who has never taken more than three uncontested marks a game.
Morris, for what it’s worth, has never taken more than one contested mark a game in his career but has averaged two marks inside 50 per game for his career which is better than Allen’s 1.6.
Allen is just a different kind of player. He’s a stay-at-home forward who wants to get into a scrap.
Brisbane didn’t have that player last year, and their forward line functioned well with the space that Morris always had, especially at the back end of the year.
Joe Daniher also wasn’t that kind of player. He was much rangier and more mercurial, preferring to run and jump at the ball rather than wrestle.
It’s like Mark Brandanowicz in Parks and Rec. The actor himself is good, and the character made me laugh, but it just didn’t work in the show. I can see a world where Allen clogs up Brisbane’s entries from last year or, at the very least, forces Morris further from goal to accommodate the way Allen wants to play.
You should always try and get good players, but this one, especially coming off an injury, feels like playing with fire.