{"id":117260,"date":"2025-09-04T03:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T03:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/117260\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T03:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T03:25:07","slug":"lions-coach-keen-for-afl-pre-finals-bye-shake-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/117260\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions coach keen for AFL pre-finals bye shake-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jarrod Berry will return from injury as coach Chris Fagan ponders the future of the pre-finals bye. (Darren England\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Brisbane coach Chris Fagan would like the pre-finals bye scrapped in favour of a week off before the grand final – even though it helped the Lions this year.<\/p>\n

The Lions will regain co-captain Lachie Neale (quad) and fellow midfielder Jarrod Berry (shoulder) for Friday night’s qualifying final against Geelong at the MCG.<\/p>\n

But Fagan would still prefer teams to head straight into the thick of finals action, to give top-four teams better reward for their regular-season achievements.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the week off has helped us this year, there\u2019s no doubt about that,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Lachie
\n The pre-finals bye has helped Lachie Neale recover from a quad injury. (Darren England\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not a fan of the week off by the way, I’ve always said that I wasn’t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it takes away the advantage that the top four teams get for finishing top four. Everyone gets a week off.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, if you don\u2019t have a week off, the top four teams play, two of them win, they get another week off, and that\u2019s the way it goes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But I’m more of a fan of having the week off before the grand final so blokes who might have little injuries can get themselves right to play<\/p>\n

“So I have a different view on it. The AFL have a different view than me, I’d rather see that disappear and be done in a different way – even though it did help us this year.”<\/p>\n

\"Lions
\n Lions coach Chris Fagan would rather teams have the week off before the grand final. (Darren England\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Fagan is among a growing number of key figures pushing for the schedule shake-up, but was unsure if it would happen next year.<\/p>\n

“I’ve no idea, I don’t talk to the people in power about that, I’ve not been asked the question,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It always comes up at this time of year. If I was asked, that’s what I’d say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather have the week off before the grand final, do all the celebratory things like the Brownlow and All-Australian in that week off, and if you want to have an All-Stars game, you can do that sort of stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen if somebody is unfortunate enough to get a concussion on a preliminary final weekend, they\u2019ve got enough time to recover to play in a grand final – all those sorts of things.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it makes sense. Have a week of celebrating football and then go into grand final week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Chris
\n Chris Fagan and the Lions begin their AFL premiership defence against Geelong. (James Ross\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Fagan said he had always been confident the Lions would stump up an impressive premiership defence, while they could take “residual confidence” out of last year’s brilliant charge.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got to the starting grid now for finals. We’ll see how we go,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But if we fail this year it won’t be because we’re not hungry enough to do it again, it’ll just be the other teams will be a bit better than us on the day.”<\/p>\n

License this article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jarrod Berry will return from injury as coach Chris Fagan ponders the future of the pre-finals bye. (Darren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[4764,4765,638,64,63,55,4766,639,1348,3355,3359,44,3356,3354,3357,85,3358,1346],"class_list":["post-117260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-aap","tag-aapnews","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australian-news","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-breaking-news","tag-daily-news","tag-global-news","tag-news","tag-news-app","tag-news-headlines","tag-news-today","tag-sports","tag-today-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}