BRISBANE has gone from being a place where players want to leave to a club that stars want to join. The most important thing about this trade and free agency flip, however, is that Lions aren’t just focusing on Queenslanders.
Instead, and with Joe Daniher, the youngest in the growing line, Brisbane continues to convince talent outside of Queensland to move to the sunshine state.
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Daniher’s decision to exercise his freelance agency rights and nominate Brisbane as his new home continues a trend the club established under list boss Dom Ambrogio, coach Chris Fagan, football manager David Noble, executive director Greg Swann and recruiting manager Stephen Conole.
If the Lions can get Daniher across the line, it would be the fourth straight low season that they have traded (or accrued through a vacant agency) a non-Queenslander. A mix of staff, climate, coaches, players and the environment has been blamed for changing the dynamic that has brought Brisbane into competing for the Premier League.
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In 2017, it was the great Hawthorn star Luke Hodge who broke his retirement with the Hawks to begin a stellar two-year stint with the Lions.
That season, the Lions also landed little striker Charlie Cameron, lured out of Adelaide on a lucrative long-term deal after playing in the Crows’ Grand Final that season.
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Cameron had been drafted from Western Australia to the Crows, where his brother Jarrod had been drafted to the West Coast in late 2018, but he had also spent time growing up and going to school in Queensland.
The following year was Brisbane’s Big Bang.
A year before his contract with Fremantle, midfielder Lachie Neale left the Perth fishbowl to remain relatively anonymous in Queensland and join the Lions.
Even Neale didn’t expect the club’s rise to be this quick, despite the fact that his form was a huge element of Brisbane’s success. On Sunday he is the racer who became the first Lion to win the Brownlow Medal since Simon Black in 2002.
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Fagan was an integral part of Brisbane’s sale to Neale, and the gun-on-baller who has an interest in training post-footy was helped by the ability to learn from the Lions mentor.
Neale grew up in South Australia with Lincoln McCarthy, who also moved to Brisbane in late 2018 after an injury-related run with the Cats, while Western Australian Marcus Adams also accepted a contract offer with the Lions after his departure from the Bulldogs that season.
Jarryd Lyons also joined the Suns as a delisted free agent after the 2018 season. Lyons already had connections with his younger brother Corey in Brisbane but was originally from Victoria.
Last year, the Lions continued their recruiting search, snatching Callum Ah Chee from rival Gold Coast in Crosstown.
Ah Chee settled in the state of Queensland with his girlfriend and property, but has also had a retreat to Western Australia, where he hails from and was in the top 10 in 2015, and where his brother Brendon plays for the Eagles.
The Lions also selected Tasmanian and former Hawk Grant Birchall as unrestricted free agent, and Adelaide’s Cam Ellis-Yolman by the same rules last year. Ellis-Yolmen was originally designed from South Australia.
If the Lions can land Daniher as a free agent or in a trade agreement with the bombers – clearly the Brisbane Free Agency option is most preferred – it would mean that the last 10 Lions recruits have been from outside Queensland as of early 2017 (including Cameron).
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It’s a major change from the Go-Home Five days of 2013, when they lost five young players in a horror trading period, and the following season, when Queenslander crossed Dayne Beams from Collingwood to be closer to their family .
And while the Lions prepare for Saturday night’s preliminary final with Geelong to reserve a spot at next week’s Gabba Grand Final, recruits will make up more than a third of the lineup. There aren’t too many examples of how a club’s fortune spins so effectively.
