Everything that pushed Brisbane to the historic premiership win was underpinned by a desire to do it for each other. But it wasn’t always that way at the club.

In 1997, the club’s first season as the Brisbane Lions after Fitzroy and Brisbane Bears merged at the end of 1996, the team finished eighth. A year later, under the leadership of John Northey, the Lions won the wooden spoon.

Hawthorn legend and Collingwood’s 1990 premiership coach Leigh Matthews was lured as the club’s next coach. It proved to be the most important decision the club has made in its short history.

In 1999, the Lions jumped to third on the ladder, only to lose the preliminary final to North Melbourne. By 2000, they made the second week of the finals but lost by 82 points to Carlton. Things had to change. What came to define the Lions was what had been missing.

They would learn to be disciplined. Dedicated to the game-plan. Predictable to each other. Uncompromising in their standards. Accountable in their commitment. Assertive in their drive. Focused on the basics. Coached superbly by Matthews. Captained brilliantly by Michael Voss.

At the start of the 2001 season, Lions chairman Graeme Downie reaffirmed his club’s vision to be the most respected and successful sporting club in Australia.

“That ambitious target was set late in 1998 when the board and senior management of the Lions wrote a five-year plan,” Downie said.

“And in 2001, we are looking to take the next step down a path that we trust will take us to this lofty position.”

The Lions went on to win the final 16 games of the 2001 season, including the Grand Final, the club’s first premiership since Fitzroy’s in 1944. They then won the next two, becoming only the fifth team in history to win three or more consecutive flags (Collingwood won four in a row from 1927-30) and made the 2004 Grand Final but lost to Port Adelaide.

Rarely has a statement in football been as prophetic as Downie’s.

In early December, 2000, Matthews addressed his players in a meeting room at the Gabba. With the draft held a week earlier, every listed Lions player was present.

The sentiment of the meeting was obvious: if Brisbane was to progress as a team—and club—it needed to stand up to the ‘big boys’ of the competition.