THERE are two ways you can look at Brisbane's MCG record.
You can go back, or you can go way back.
Lions coach Chris Fagan chooses the former. As he should.
"It depends how far you go back," Fagan laughed on Saturday night. "You can make our record look really terrible or you can just look at this year and go, 'Oh it's not too bad'. I'm looking at this year."
Brisbane recorded a comfortable win over Melbourne back in April at the MCG, then defeated Geelong in a preliminary final thriller there on Saturday evening. Sandwiched in between was a nail-biting one-point loss to Collingwood in August.
There's a reason Fagan won't want to look too far into the past. Brisbane has a poor 3-16 record at the MCG dating back across the last decade, though that run features a gruelling period where the Lions lost 15 of 16 straight games there.
The three wins are all from 2020 onwards, with Brisbane holding a 3-8 record since the turn of the decade. The Lions also have a far more respectable 2-2 record in finals games at the MCG over the last decade.
Brisbane also has the advantage of having played at the MCG far more recently than Sydney. The Lions got that experience on Saturday night. The Swans haven't had a game there since April 28. Not that Fagan thinks it matters.
"I think the Swans have got a pretty good record at the MCG, haven't they?" he said.
"It probably means bugger all then. It's good for our blokes to have played here, because we don't get that many opportunities. This is our third game this year. We've had two wins and a one-point loss, so we're going better on the MCG than we used to."
Fagan was right. Sydney does indeed have a good record at the MCG. Across the last decade, the Swans actually have a winning record at the home of Saturday's Grand Final and are 15-14 at the ground across that stretch.
Like Brisbane, Sydney has also played at the MCG three times this year. It beat Collingwood there in March and Hawthorn there in April, but surprisingly lost to the wooden spooners Richmond at the MCG back in round three.
The Swans might look at the fact they haven't played at the MCG in 153 days as a negative, though. They might also look at their recent run in a bad light, given they hold a 6-8 record there since 2020 and are 2-4 in finals there across the last decade.
Sydney will also have to contend with its recent record against its Grand Final opponents in Brisbane. The Lions have now won five of their last six games against the Swans dating back to 2019.
That includes Brisbane's round 19 victory over Sydney earlier this year, where a resurgent Lions overturned a 15-point deficit at three-quarter time to grab a dramatic two-point victory at the Gabba.
Again, though, Fagan won't want to look too far beyond that. Sydney had previously won 11 consecutive matches against Brisbane between 2010 to 2018, doing so by an average winning margin of 41.5 points.
