The Heavyweight Battle of the Century
In the Blue and White corner, we have Geelong:
Premierships: 2007, 2009 2011 and 2022
In the Maroon, Blue and Yellow corner we have Brisbane:
Premierships: 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2024
Introduction
As the dust settles on the 2025 Preliminary Finals, with Collingwood fans still cursing an umpire, the stage is now set for a true Heavyweight Grand Final.
With four Premiership Cups each since 2001, the battle between Geelong and Brisbane is no ordinary Grand Final, it is a Heavyweight clash for an unprecedented (the most overused word in the English language) fifth Premiership Cup 25 years into the new millennium.
Hawthorn blew their chance to be a contender when Geelong bested them by five goals in one Preliminary Final, while the Lions earned their right at immortality in the other prelim.
Coming into the Preliminary Finals, Geelong, Brisbane and Hawthorn had all won four premierships since 2001 each to start the first quarter of the new century, so it seems appropriate two of the power of clubs have battled their way to Grand Final to decide who is the best team of the new century and the new millennium.
Think about that for a minute, Geelong, Brisbane and Hawthorn have won 12 of the 24 Premiership won in the new millennium. That is fifty percent of all Premierships since 2001 have been won by three teams.
Further, if you add Richmond with three Premierships and Sydney, West Coast and Collingwood with two Premierships each, that means out of the 24 Premierships decided since 2001, seven teams have won 21 Premierships between them in a now 18 team competition.
Yet further, except for the 2021 Grand Final between the Demons and the Bulldogs, at least one of the above-mentioned seven teams has played in 23 of the 24 decided Grand Finals since 2001. That is an amazing statistic.
The question as to whether the AFL’s equalisation protocols have worked is a debate best left for another day, and such debate should not undervalue the worth of the new super clubs who now epitomise what it means to be a professional sporting club in the new millennium.
Bravo to the Cats and Lions, not only for setting up a monster Grand Final playoff, but also for your resilience, fortitude, and professionalism proven over a long period of time to remain relevant from one generation to the next.
Geelong and Brisbane have trudged very different paths to earn the right to be the first team to win five Premiership Cups in the first 25 years of the new century, so let’s explore the route both clubs have travelled to be contenders in this Heavyweight Grand Final.
Geelong – the Pain of Nick Davis in 2005 and the Misery of 2006
In the 1990s, the Cats had quite a few chances to snag a Premiership or two, but as good as those teams were, they had a soft underbelly which was consistently exposed in repeated Grand Finals from 1989 to 1995. As good as Buddha Hocking’s teams were, grasping the Premiership Cup was a hurdle too high.
At the turn of the century, the Cats slowly started to build a side capable of challenging again under the tutelage of Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson. However, the new millennial Cats, at least for a period of time, resembled the Cats circa 1989 to 1995, as they suffered more pain before the turning point came at the end of the 2006 season.
To a man, ask any Geelong player from Bomber’s era what is the one game that still sticks in their mind with a tint of anger and regret, and they will say, “Nick bloody Davis in the 2005 Semi-Final”.
Until the last quarter of the 2005 Semi-Final, the Cats had the Swans on toast as it seemed like they were booking a date with St Kilda in the 2005 Preliminary Final. However, the mercurial Nick Davis played one of the all-time best last quarters in the history of the game as he singlehandedly got the Swans the win and on their way to their first Premiership in 72 years.
There were rumblings at the time that this Geelong team still had a soft underbelly as the noise about the Mark Thompson’s coaching methods started to be questioned.
Nobody knew it at the time that the humiliation of Nick Davis nightmare would be the game that gave the Cats the resolve to become one of the most hardened teams in the AFL.
The saying “the night is always darkest just before the dawn”, never was more prophetic than the Cats in season 2006. In the 2006 season the Cats had a very disappointing, season winning only ten and a half games, and in the aftermath, the entirety of the club was reevaluated and questioned at season’s end.
As the Cats questioned every aspect of their club at the end of 2006, and most expected Mark Thompson to be sacked, but herein lies the secret of the Cats’ success from 2007 onwards.
Unlike all clubs in seasons past, including Geelong, the coach’s head would be on the chopping block after seasons 2005 and 2006, however, the Cats went the other way and backed Mark Thompson in.
To start the 2007 season the entire Geelong Football Club from their President Frank Costa, CEO Brian Cook, Coach Mark Thompson, the assistant coaches, the staff, and the players operated as a complete unit with each process at the club in harmony with the next.
What Geelong did at the end of the 2006 revolutionised the AFL, as Geelong knew they were in a glass half scenario, and they backed themselves in. The common thought at the time was there was no way Mark Thompson would be coaching the Cats in 2007.
The Cats steeled their resolve as club at the end of 2006, and in the process, they become the most professionally run club in the history of the AFL.
In 2007 Geelong’s new resolve paid immediate dividends as they blasted a hapless Port Adelaide by a record margin to win the 2007 Grand Final. Whereas Geelong teams of the past look a bit soft, the 2007 Geelong side was one of the most hardened and ruthless teams in AFL/VFL history.
From a club being a down and out feather dusters in 2006 to being roosters by the end of season 2007, Geelong rewrote the book on how to become a successful club. In 2016 Richmond’s Ben Gale and Peggy O’Neil imitated the Geelong blueprint when they stood by their man Damian Hardwick at the end of the 2016 season, and as they say three Premierships later, the rest is history.
2008 ushered in the rise of Hawthorn, another truly professional and ruthless club, who surprised an inaccurate Geelong team in 2008 decider. The Cats were beaten, but not disgraced.
In 2009, the Cats made amends by continuing the never-ending misery of the Saints in a very tight and entertaining Grand Final.
In 2010 a ‘burnt out’ Mark Thompson (his words) resigned at the end of the season and the baton was handed over to the untried Chris Scott in another brave decision by the Frank Costa-led hierarchy at the Cats.
Following the success of the untried Alastair Clarkson at Hawthorn, Geelong followed suit with the departure of Mark Thompson and named Chris Scott as their head coach.
It is history now that the Cats choice was vindicated with the Chris Scott-coached Cats pipping the Pies in the 2011 Grand Final.
Chris Scott is now in his 15th year as coach for the Cats, and in that time, Geelong has only missed the finals a couple of times, and more importantly they never bottomed out.
While Geelong lost a Covid Grand Final at the Gabba to the Tigers in 2020, they rebounded in 2022 and completely devastated and demoralised the Swans in the 2022 decider.
It is worth mentioning the Cats have morphed into a destination club offering a less hectic lifestyle, hobby farms and Cotton-On underwear.
After some early heartaches at the start of the century, the Geelong Football Club reinvented itself to now be the model of what success in any sporting club in Australia should look like.
In 2021 the much-loved Frank Costa sadly passed away, and he was given a State Funeral attended by the Geelong faithful at their beloved GMHBA Stadium. Make no mistake, Costa brought professionalism not only to the Geelong Football Club, but to the AFL as well.
The spirit of Frank Costa will again be omnipresent when Patrick Dangerfield leads his Cats onto the field next Saturday in a match to decide if the Geelong are truly the greatest team of all.
Brisbane – A long journey from Lethal Leigh into Papa Smurf Fagan
At the turn of the century, the Brisbane Lions (Fitzroy and Bears) were being coached by arguably the greatest player of all time, Leigh Matthews. As coach, Matthews had already coached the Magpies to a Premiership in 1990 which exorcised the feared Collywobbles from Victoria Park, and he was the right fit for the Lions to start the century.
Let’s look back to look forward.
With the financial backing of Christopher Skase in 1987, an AFL licence was awarded to a new entity to the AFL called the Brisbane Bears, who played their home matches at Carrara on the Gold Coast.
As the ‘Bad News Bears’ started to establish their identity by the mid-1990’s, the Fitzroy Football Club was in its death throes. Under administration, the club it looked like they were finished. At the end of the 1996 season the ‘Carrara Bear’s were also in some financial trouble, despite their improvement on the field.
In 1996, the Bears were still paying for Skase’s excesses even though he left in 1990, and they needed help.
Just to back up a little, the Brisbane Bears won the 1991 Reserves Premiership coached by Rodney Eade, a success which coincided with the appointment of Bob Hammond as President, Noel Gordon as the Chairman, and Andrew Ireland CEO of the club to attempt to rejuvenate the Bears after the demise and damage of the Christpoher Skase years.
At the end of the 1996 season the Brisbane Bears brokered a deal with the administrators of the Fitzroy Football Club to form the club now known as the Brisbane Lions Football Club. At the time, the amalgamation left a bitter taste in the mouths of the supporters from both clubs. Nonetheless, Fitzroy didn’t lose its history, and the Bears-cum-Lions had their much needed financial security.
It was a marriage of convenience, and many questioned how long it would last.
In 1998, it looked like the whole Bears, Lions and Fitzroy merger was ready to implode when John Northey was sacked as coach midway through the season and Roger Merrett was appointed as the interim coach.
Using the metaphor ‘the night is always darkest just before the dawn’ once again, the sacking of John Northey was the Lions ‘line in the sad’ moment.
In 1998 the Lions had a very talented pool of players with the genesis of their 2001 Premiership team already assembled, but the club needed to bring a coach to the organisation that would bring stability, and that man was Lethal Leigh Matthews.
It is worth mentioning at this point, that Andrew Ireland was the CEO of the Lions from 1990 to 2001, and he along with Graeme Downie (Chairman) restructured a struggling club/s to form the current incarnation of the Lions.
In 1999, the experienced Leigh Matthews took the Lions on a journey of unbridled success that, twelve months earlier, seemed impossible.
In 2001 Essendon were the power team of the league, and for all intents and purposes it seemed the Dons would naturally go back-to-back. However, like in 1990, Leigh Matthews was again Kevin Sheedy’s kryptonite, as his Lions held on for a 26-point victory and the club’s first Premiership since 1944.
The legend of the Lions-Kings was franked when the Michael Voss-led Lions franked their immorality with a threepeat of flags, with successes over Collingwood in 2002 and 2003.
In 2004, the Port Adelaide Power outplayed the Lions in the Grand Final, but that loss did little to harm the legend of the threepeat Lion Kings.
Leigh Matthews continued to coach Brisbane until the end of the 2008 season, but the team never recaptured the form of 2001 to 2004.
As the Lions were slipping back to the pack in the mid-2000’s, it was the age of the super professional teams as Geelong and Hawthorn who reshaped the AFL landscape.
Brisbane lost a lot of talent very quickly in the mid-2000’s and when Michael Voss took over coaching duties in 2009, he was on hiding to nothing to even attempt to emulate the feats of Leigh Matthews. In hindsight, it is not surprising his tenure as coach was cut short in 2013 when he was replaced by Mark Harvey as the interim coach for the rest of the season.
Justin Leppitsch coached the Lions through the dark years of 2014 to 2016, albeit with the same result as his former teammate and captain, Michael Voss.
In the modern era, former players coaching the club they played for rarely succeeds, with the only exception being John Worsfold.
At the end of the 2016 season, the Lions were in a dark place, and they knew it.
Instead of rushing out and signing the first name to be coach in 2017, a panel of five lead by Lions CEO Greg Swann, and Lions General Manager of Football, David Noble, went through a thorough and exhaustive process to select the right man for the job.
Against all odds, a coaching assistant from the Hawthorn stood out, and his name was Chris Fagan.
It was a strange choice as Fagan had never played AFL at the highest level, and he was relatively old when compared to other coaches at the highest level.
Nonetheless, The Lions had their man, and that man was Chris Fagan.
After the failed tenure of Justin Leppitsch, the Lions learned from previous mistakes and went through a highly professional process to select Chris Fagan.
In seasons 2017 and 2018, the Lions bottomed out, with many critics questioning the wisdom of the appointment of Chris Fagan as coach. However, like Geelong in 2006 and Richmond 2016, the Lions Board doubled down on their support for Fagan.
Since 2018, the Lions have consistently made the finals, being rewarded with Grand Final Appearances in 2023 (loss to Collingwood) and 2024 (thrashed the Sydney Swans) and again this year, to make it three in a row.
The credit for the Lions’ recent success must date back to the end of the 2016 season, when the club made a considered and professional choice to select Chris Fagan after a lean ten years. It was a departure from a period where emotions took over for the coaching selections of Voss and Leppitsch.
The 2025 Grand Final – A Heavyweight Title Match for the Team of the Century
Unlike previous Grand Finals, there is no underdog, nor any sentimental favourite connected to this decider. Rather, it is the battle between two well-credentialed and established juggernauts to decide who is the best.
I have no dog in the fight on Saturday afternoon. As such, I look forward to watching this battle with the same fervour as an Ali v Frazier or Foreman matchup, or John Betrand telling his crew to not look into the eyes of Dennis Connor and his crew as he skippered Australia II to a miraculous win over the Yanks in the 1983 America’s Cup.
Writing this article (of which somebody will point out some error or inaccuracy I’ve made) has strengthened my resolve that success in this competition has very little to do with trade or draft picks. Rather, it is a culture of professionalism and internal structures that not only breeds success, but it also ensures success is ongoing.
You’d be hard-pressed to argue that either of the Lions or Cats do not possess copious amounts of either.
