Coming into a game in enemy territory, against a team coming off a pretty impressive Round 12 win over the reigning premiers, the Brisbane Lions could have been forgiven for being a bit nervous.
13th on the ladder and looking anything but a team likely to get back to the Grand Final, the Lions limped into the bye with just four wins.
But you can make it five wins upon their return, as they gave the Dogs a bit of a hiding at Marvel Stadium. The scoreboard tells us that they won by 43-points, but this felt like more. Perhaps it should have been.
They were dominant in the air, at stoppages, and their tackling efforts made the Dogs look toothless, in comparison.
There are a few games you can get a good feel for in the first ten-or-so minutes, and this was one of them. With Jarrod Berry going to Marcus Bontempelli, you got the sense that the Lions weren’t here to muck around (no typo). It worked perfectly through the first half, with Berry not only doing the job on Bont, but sucking Tom Liberatore into giving away a couple of cheap free kicks along the way, as he tried to act as a buffer between his captain and the tagger.
With Bont unable to get his hands on it, the Brisbane midfield went “whack” and took control of the contest in the guts. And when you control the middle against the Dogs in the way they did, you control the game.
Plenty to get through in this one, as we dive into the Good, Bad, and Ugly of the big Brisbane win.
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