I’m not sure that I have been as impressed, and then suddenly unimpressed by a team like I was the Brisbane Lions as they sent Carlton into the 2024 football wilderness on the back of an electrifying first 50 minutes of footy, and a pretty ordinary remaining 70 minutes.
The upshot here, is that the first 50 minutes were so good, that they really could have pulled up stumps, sat back and discussed the dissatisfying way the second series of House of the Dragon finished, and they still would have won.
Carlton stunk.
They did not show up to play, and were summarily pounded in the first quarter as they failed to register a score. Seriously boys, why did you even bother?
The Lions ran rings around the hapless Blues, piling on 60 points before the Baggers bothered the scorekeepers, with Carlton narrowly avoiding some infamous records by kicking a couple of goals to end the first half.
Carlton mounted a small comeback through the third, adding three more on the trot to make it five in a row, but giving a team like Brisbane a ten goal head start is not something that was part of the playbook, unless the playbook was written by a blithering idiot. Even as the Blues started to link up, you had the feeling it would only take a slip up here or there for things to fall apart.
And they did fall apart.
Lying in wait, Brisbane pounced on the Blues when they inevitably cocked up, and even as Carlton whittled the margin down under 30 points, it never really felt as though they were a threat.
They just weren’t good enough, and the Lions had too much in reserve.
Not that Brisbane were flawless – they had a period as Carlton made their move, where they couldn’t hit the ocean from the beach. Logan Morris missed a set shot from 15 metres out, directly in front, and then Zac Bailey missed his entire boot with the footy to squander another chance.
Had the Lions played the entire game the way they did the first quarter and a half, we would have been pulling out the record books. As is stands, their effort fell away. They got used to playing against witches’ hats, and their effort dipped to match the opposition.
As for the Blues, there is a disconnect somewhere at Ikon Park, and my guess is that there’ll be a whole bunch of theories about what went wrong. Hell, I might even throw a few out there, myself, as part of this review.
Speaking of which, time to jump into The Mongrel’s Big Statements.
The remainder of this article is for our members. They support me, and I provide for them. It’s a good deal.
All HB’s Finals reviews from here on out are locked for our members. He owns the place, y’know? Makes these types of calls. This is one of them. He believes work such as this is worth a mere pittance per day. If you don’t, that’s fine. You’re welcome to join and keep reading if you do.
