The footy season is a marathon, not a sprint.
Each game goes for about three hours, a long amount of time in our increasingly attention starved society. Multiply that by the 218 games over several months and the time starts to add up.
Especially if you are in one of the highest profile jobs in footy.
“The level of intensity that’s required to be a senior coach, because it is a lifestyle, it never leaves you alone,” premiership winning coach Chris Fagan said after the grand final.
“It’s 365 days a year, seven days a week. It’s just always in your head. You’re always thinking about the club and what’s next.”
In the era of short form video and instant takes, being involved in football nearly forces you to do the opposite.
You don’t scroll through football games, you absorb them.
But football games, especially important ones, aren’t one continuous event. They are made up of a series of moments and contests that separate the winner from the loser.
The bigger the stakes, the more important those discrete moments are. It’s also something that newly minted three-time premiership coach Fagan has previously attested to.
“Finals come down to moments,” Fagan told afl.com.au in 2020.
It was a theme he has repeatedly come back to, year after year. Win enough of those moments at the right time and you might just win the premiership. It’s a formula that the Lions have ridden to their spot as maybe the most successful side of the modern era.
The importance of moments is something that wasn’t lost on his opposite number coming into the finals.
“The way to win premierships is to win games of footy, and you win games of footy by winning more moments than the opposition,” Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir explained earlier in September.
Those moments also turned the 2026 grand final into one of the greatest in recent history. It was in those moments that the two-time champion Lions became three-time champions.
By winning enough moments at the right time Brisbane was able to overcome the biggest lead in time-on in a final since at least 2001.
Much of the 2026 grand final played out the way that the 2026 season had progressed, with Fremantle in control. On paper, Fremantle not just dominated proceedings but played in a way that took away Brisbane’s strengths.
“Fremantle deserved to win that game today. They were better,” Fagan said.
“They were better than us for longer periods. They were killing us at clearance and contested possession, particularly in that third quarter and we couldn’t get any territory. They had a lot of inside 50s. They had more shots.”
On paper, Fremantle should have won the game and done so comfortably.
But Brisbane won the moments that mattered.
“It’s a little bit like this group has become this team that seems to need to get themselves into a dire situation before they can actually produce their best,” Fagan said.
This is how Brisbane won the 2026 grand final.
A tight first half
It wasn’t just a late swing that made the game a classic. This year’s grand final had twists and turns almost from the first bounce. The first half saw nine lead changes through the first two stanzas, with the two sides often trading goals.
Despite this, more things were breaking Fremantle’s way than Brisbane’s early.
In the first half Fremantle was able to control the game in ways that Brisbane usually thrive. The Dockers were able to effectively neutralise the Lions’ usually strong clearance game through the first half, both gaining position and hitting the scoreboard.
While the Lions broke even at around the ground stoppages, the Dockers were able to dominate centre clearances and piled on three goals from the middle.
The Dockers were also able to effectively outmanoeuvre the Lions in the air. The Lions have traditionally had the best mark differential of any team, with Fremantle one of the few to seriously challenge them.
However Fremantle dominated the marking battle, with their tall timber taking the upper hand. Fremantle also seemed to find a way to isolate Brisbane’s shaky defence, with Patrick Voss seemingly finding a weak spot in their defensive set up.
Even when the Lions were able to dominate field position — such as the ten minute or so burst in the middle of the second quarter — they were unable to pile on the points.
The only thing keeping the Lions in the game was their maniacal forward half pressure. The Lions managed nine first half tackles inside their own 50 to just two from the Dockers. Brisbane was also able to translate this into a four goal edge in front half intercept scoring in the half.
At the end of the first half, the margin was the same before a ball was kicked in anger. Instead of four quarters to decide the premier, there would be just two.
The back end
For much of the third quarter it looked like the control Fremantle were able to exert on the game was starting to pay off on the scoreboard. While the game still stayed within a couple of goals, Brisbane didn’t look out of it.
That was until Fremantle piled on 14 points in around five minutes, seemingly creating enough of a barrier to preserve the Flagmantle dream.
Some things slowly started to turn Brisbane’s way despite the Dockers looking like they were gaining an unassailable lead. The Lions were slowly able to gain ascendancy in the air, managing 15 marks on the lead in the second half to nil.
They were also slowly able to quell Caleb Serong’s gigantic influence on the game, particularly at stoppage. After collecting 12 clearances in the first three quarters Serong managed just one in the final period.
Most importantly the Lions started to work out how to pierce the league’s best defence absent its most important piece — captain Alex Pearce.
“We had to play a bit smaller and we missed his leadership across the back end of the game and clearly missed his leadership late. He gives us so much in that aspect of the game,” Longmuir said after the game about Pearce’s game-ending Achilles injury.
Before the injury Brisbane managed just one goal from set shots, with three coming after the injury. The Lions struggled to move the ball effectively up ground before his injury, but found the paths to goal over time. It’s also easy to imagine how Pearce would have settled the ship once it started going down fast in the end.
Of course, those last four minutes are the things dreams — and nightmares — are made of. Will Ashcroft winning three straight centre clearances from the same spot, with every Lion rising around the young star.
The moments and the missed missed opportunities
In the end it’s the moments that will resonate the longest after this magical grand final. We will remember how Ashcroft won the ball in the middle late, and how LOgan Morris kicked straight. We will remember Josh Dunkley’s defensive prowess and Ryan Lester’s last ditch effort to save a goal.
Brisbane didn’t have any passengers, nor did Fremantle. That’s what made the Norm Smith Medal so hard to choose this year, and so controversial.
Unfortunately the memories for Fremantle will be more bitter than sweet. If they had to map out what the perfect game would look like for them — scoring aside — it would have looked something like what played out in the end.
“Obviously for you know four quarters we played “Fremantle football” and it’s the last two minutes we didn’t take our moments,” Norm Smith medallist Shai Bolton said after the game.
For now, it’s Brisbane’s day to celebrate yet again. Especially those four minutes and 18 seconds in the last quarter where Brisbane overcame Fremantle, a seventeen point deficit and, yes, Wharfie Time to cement their place as one of the greatest teams in football history.
Discussion about this post