They’re the little girl with the little curl. When they’re bad, the Brisbane Lions are horrid. When they’re good, they’re unstoppable. There’s a familiar pattern to how this plays out. They need a wound, a spur, a thrashing. They need a blast from the coach, usually delivered via the press conference. They need a game at the Gabba or the MCG, not a snoozer at Docklands, or Carrara or Sydney Showground. And most of all, they need to know that they’ll be eliminated if they lose.
They need to be fully invested, right from the opening minute. There’s usually an early pressure act that they celebrate collectively – a smother, a lunging spoil, the type of thing that had been entirely absent the week before. There’s usually a high pressure rating, a measure that is as inexplicable as the score review system, but which is always a good indication of what side of the bed the Lions have woken up on.
