Former Brisbane Lions skipper Dayne Zorko says a meeting between a few of the club’s veterans at Round 12 helped turn the club around after a mediocre start to the year.
Last year’s AFL grand finalists had an uncharacteristically poor first half of the 2024 season, with just four wins and one draw from their first 11 games.
They sat 13th on the ladder and, with their year at a crossroads, needed something to change.
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That’s when, Zorko has now revealed, a group of elder statesmen within the playing group started to question their own football mortality.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Zorko told 3AW radio after Brisbane’s 60-point grand final win over Sydney on Saturday.
“In Round 12, I think we had the bye, myself, Joe (Daniher) and Ryan (Lester) sat down with Harris Andrews and we said, ‘It might be time we start playing the kids, we might have to turn to next year — if that’s the case, it’s been fun’.”
That didn’t happen.
Instead, all three of the over-30 stars — Zorko, Daniher and Lester — reaffirmed to themselves their value in the team with instrumental roles in resurrecting the Lions from the canvas in the second half of the season.
“We came up with a clear plan that day that we weren’t going to go down that path,” Zorko said of the suggestion that younger players should take their spots in the team.
“There was still so much football to go.
And every week for the last 14 weeks, we’ve caught up as a group.
“We added Josh Dunkley to that fray. It was another senior figure who’s been in these big moments, and we just talked through everything, every week.
“We’d catch up for coffee and we really wanted to make a difference and impact this season.
“We went on that nine-game win streak, which was great, had a couple slip ups, but one thing we knew was we knew our best football was certainly going to get the job done, and today was a great example of that.
And Zorko has a simple message to those who claimed an end-of-season US trip fractured Brisbane’s playing group: ‘thanks’.
Zorko’s integral role in the Lions’ premiership was underscored by the way that coach Chris Fagan called the former skipper onto stage, alongside co-captains Lachie Neale and Harris Andrews, before collecting the cup on Saturday.
It seemed like a spontaneous good deed from Fagan, who was in his second year at the club when Zorko was elevated to the captaincy.
In reality, Fagan was keeping a promise he made to Zorko when the veteran ended his five-year stint as captain at the end of the 2022 season.
“He stuck by his word, that’s why he is the best in the world,” Zorko said.
Zorko has remained a spiritual leader at the Lions after stepping down as skipper, including when reports of a dressing-room rift – allegedly emanating from an off-season trip — hit the club amid a 0-3 start to 2024.
“We kept receipts on everything,” Zorko quipped.
“We only deal in facts at the club. None of it was fact.
“And if anything, thank you, because it galvanised us and made us even stronger and tighter.
“This group has been up against it all year, there’s been plenty of stuff written about us. To park all that and still deliver the results, get the process right, it’s so special.”
Hugh McCluggage noted that “what happened overseas was a non-issue” but admitted the Lions required some hard conversations to turn their patchy early form around.
“We probably deserved our fair share of criticism, we weren’t playing very well … we weren’t winning games and we knew we had a list that should be winning games,” McCluggage said.Outside Fagan, few individuals have played as big a role as Zorko in dragging Brisbane from the doldrums to the premiership dais.
The versatile star, who was famously recruited by Gold Coast as a local priority selection, then made his AFL debut at age 23 after being traded onto the Lions, tallied 166 games before finally playing his first final.
It set a new club record for the longest finals wait, outdoing Marcus Ashcroft.
“I went through the heartache with Fages when we weren’t going so well. We shifted the club enormously,” the 35-year-old said.
“I’m so proud of where this club has come over the last nine or 10 years. It’s been incredible.”
Zorko, who in August signed a one-year contract extension, wants to go back-to-back rather than contemplate retirement after winning a flag that seemed impossible after being overlooked in multiple drafts.
“I’ll keep going. Being a part of this and spending it with the most incredible teammates is the best feeling n the world,” he said.
“It’s moments like this you work so hard for and I don’t want to let that go any time soon.”
Zorko played 15 finals before his grand final glory came in the form of a 60-point shellacking of Sydney at the MCG.
This season, he became the oldest All-Australian of the modern era after embracing a shift to half back that was a byproduct of Keidean Coleman’s knee reconstruction.
“He would’ve had offers to go elsewhere and for him to get this reward at 35, it’s a pretty special story,” Neale said.
“Been through really dark days at the footy club – 8,000-10,000 rocking up to games at the Gabba and … stuck it out, stuck fat.”
– With AAP