Brisbane

In the very early years of this century the Brisbane Lions were a combative and competitive footy club. They achieved a near mythical ‘threepeat’ by winning three grannies in a row (a legacy that was quickly extinguished by losing a grannie to a Mark ‘Chocco’ Williams coached Port Adelaide, which is the modern equivalent of losing four grand finals in a row).


The mastermind of Brisbane’s success is considered to be Leigh Mathews (who, as an aside, was given the nickname “Lethal” because he is the only person in footy not to laugh outrageously at the comic antics of Jason Akermanis: ice cold, like an assassin). Lethal’s key to getting Brisbane to grand final glory was simple – stack the team with Fanta-pants. Travelling all over Australia, Lethal played a tune like a ginger pied piper, cramming the likes of Justin Leppitsch, Michael Voss, Jason Akermanis and Luke Power into his travelling footy freak show.


Leigh was smart. He knew that nobody in life, let alone on a footy field, wants to get upstaged by a ginger. With Vossy and Aka winning brownlows the rest of the boys would have to step up. And with Jonathan Brown drafted in as the Silverback to protect the buffoonery of rangas, the Brisbane boys had no option but to dig deep. Shaun Hart even sought the power of the good Lord to beat his blood-nutted brothers and was rewarded with a Norm Smith and a guaranteed seat at the right hand of the Father.


And when Vossy called it quits and Aka moved his stand-up routine to Whitten Oval, the magical ginger haze that had enveloped Brisbane for three glorious years drifted south to Kardinia Park where another smart coach, Mark Thompson, was stuffing his bag of tricks with players like Cameron Ling, Steve Johnson and Joel Selwood.


All true . . .