Like most footy fans, I watched the Brisbane Lions dismantle the Bombers in Round Eight with a morbid curiosity.
At home, usually you could have a slight expectation that Essendon would rise to the occasion and have a real crack at the visitors, perhaps even challenge them. However, five minutes into the contest, the writing wasn’t just on the wall, it was splashed all over the windows, doors, floors, and ceilings – it was a mauling, but more like one of those nature videos where the lioness is teaching her cubs to hunt. You know the ones – they kind of play with their food?
For that is what the Bombers were – prey.
The bigger story, apparently, was the emergence of a picture of a whiteboard that the Lions players had populated during the week, listing the strengths and weaknesses of their upcoming opponents. To say it was unflattering would be an understatement, but are we now at the point where the reveal of this controversial piece of Brisbane preparation is bigger than the story behind it – everything they said was true. Most of it, anyway.
In the current climate, everyone is so aware of damaging a player’s mental health, or making them feel sad, that we no longer give blunt assessments of how a player is travelling, or what the perceptions of them are from the opposition. The media knows – make no mistake, they know – but the tip-toeing around matters such as this isn’t doing anyone a favour.
It is doing a massive disservice.
We’re now at the point where a brutally honest couple of words from an opposition team can sum up where a team is at far more accurately than a panel of experts dancing around the subject for half an hour and saying very little.
With that, it is probably a good idea to have a look at how accurate the Brisbane Lions were in their assessments of the best the Bombers had to offer.
Let’s work through it.
This is just the introduction – the remainder of this article is for our members. They support me, and I provide for them. It’s a good deal.
Oh… a Mongrel paywall… the worst of all paywalls. We’re all in on the 2026 AFL season. Player articles, stats, awards, game coverage. Dump the mainstream lip service and dive into articles like this – you will never look back. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I consider it your loss as we get into the grind of the season, and you’re stuck with the stuff that’s frustrated you for years.
