BRISBANE v SYDNEY GAME ANALYSIS

A bit of a different tact with the game analysis this week with a huge focus on the game itself then isolated coaching concepts like I normally do.

Going into the game Brisbane had regained some form beating Gold Coast and Richmond by really doubling down on their stoppage/clearance game as well as transition defense.

In those 2 games they were +29 in first possession, +22 in clearance, +6 in center clearance, + 43 in scores from stoppage and + 24 in scores from turnover.

On transition defense they won 90% of the stats for chain to score %, d50 to f50 %, d50 to score %, defensive half to f50 % and defensive half to score % but more importantly kept both teams to well below league average in those metrics.

Moving to the Sydney game, those metrics remained a huge focus on stopping the Swans' handball chain game and although the Swans still managed 705m gained from handball, the eye test proved it just wasn't the same as we've seen with a little glimpse in the last quarter when the game was done and dusted.

SYDNEY PLAN

In the last 2 previous games, the Swans had been spanked at stoppage (-20 in clearance against St Kilda and Port Adelaide) and would have been spooked by the Lions last games as mentioned above.

Sydney opted to start with an extra around the ball which didn't help things (-13 in this game) but then also leaves Harris Andrews twiddling his thumbs in anticipation for intercept after intercept.

BRISBANE PLAN

With offensive advantage at stoppage they simply had to focus on denying Sydney corridor space to run handball chains through.

SYDNEY HANDBALL CHAINS

Sydney lead the league in handball meters gained by a fair margin to the 2nd best team in that area (696 to 565 Collingwood) and this is it looked like once they were able to get it going in this game, albeit in the last quarter when the pressure from Brisbane was way down and fait enough.

BRISBANE DEFENDING HANDBALL CHAINS

The Lions' mids were rinsed good and proper a month ago for a lack of 2-way running on defense but were possibly just trying to get through the middle part of the season unscathed and fill up for the run home, which they definitely seem to be doing no going by the defensive run to shut off corridor on Sydney handball chains early in the game.

With Brisbane taking away corridor as shown earlier, you can turn them into a wide kick-mark team and then you simply have to crowd the space just in front of the kicker (but out of the protected space of course), to limit and runners from behind to receive handballs and the ensuring overlap.

Brisbane were diligent here but I also suspect Sydney were a bit hesitant to be so attacking once the goals started to flow for the Lions.   

As good as Brisbane's preparation was for this game, Sydney left a lot of potential scoring opportunities on the table as players didn't give handballs when they normally would have so far in 2026 which I'm sure will be on the review tape this week.

With Brisbane's defense and our poor transition game the stats were startling:

• Chain to Score - 23.8% season average to 18.7% in this game
• D50 to F50 - 27.7 % to 13.7% (only went 2 for 29 in the first half!)
• D50 to Score - 11.91% to 2.0%
• Defensive Half to F50 - 35.5% to 22.7%
• Defensive Half to Score - 15% to 6.7%

Other parts of the game that didn't help and was totally out of character was clangers (41-25 at half time) with many of the coming out of defensive 50 resulting 41pts from turnover for the Lions (again by half time) v 44pts average off turnover per (full) game so far in 2026. 

Personally, I saw signs that we/Sydney were at least half to blame for this result so we can turn this around pretty quick, especially getting some troops back that are very important to what we do in McInerney and Papley + more games into Gulden who was well off the pace.

Much like the opposition 4 weeks ago, hopefully this is the kick in the backside we need to really kickstart a finals tilt.