{"id":122842,"date":"2025-09-06T09:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/122842\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T09:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:27:10","slug":"lions-on-the-brink-with-eric-hipwood-and-lachie-neale-set-to-miss-rest-of-premiership-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/122842\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions on the brink with Eric Hipwood and Lachie Neale set to miss rest of premiership defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

The banged-up Brisbane Lions will be without important forward Eric Hipwood, and likely star midfielder Lachie Neale, for the rest of their premiership defence.<\/p>\n

Dual Brownlow medallist Neale injured his right calf in the 16.16 (112) to 11.8 (74) qualifying final defeat to Geelong at the MCG on Friday night.<\/p>\n

It was Neale’s first game in more than a month, having been sidelined for the last three games of the home-and-away season due to a quad complaint.<\/p>\n

Neale will join premiership defenders Jack Payne (knee) and Noah Answerth (achilles) on the sidelines.<\/p>\n

Hipwood didn’t play against Geelong due to a calf injury, but a scan has also revealed a partial tear in his left ACL.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old will have surgery in coming days in a bid to have him available during the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

Hipwood, incredibly, could have been playing with the injury for months.<\/p>\n

“Having Eric miss the finals series through injury is really devastating for him and his family and for us as a club,” Lions football boss Danny Daly said.<\/p>\n

“It’s an incredible effort by Eric to have been playing each week with this injury and still giving his all to the team regardless.”<\/p>\n

On Friday night, Lions coach Chris Fagan admitted he was “not expecting great news” from Neale’s scans on Saturday after returning to Brisbane.<\/p>\n

“Looks like he’s done a calf, so that’s not a good thing,” Fagan said.<\/p>\n

“He’s a pretty tough sort of guy, can usually play through those, but he couldn’t.<\/p>\n

Neale injury makes Lions loss worse<\/a><\/p>\n

Brisbane’s premiership defence is on shaky ground after losing star midfielder Lachie Neale to a likely season-ending injury in their qualifying final defeat.<\/p>\n

“It takes a lot for him to come off, so I’d suspect it’s something significant.”<\/p>\n

Neale still gathered 32 disposals against the Cats, but had limited influence on the game as he was part of a Lions midfield that was badly beaten.<\/p>\n

Brisbane overcame major adversity last year, winning all four finals en route to their first flag in 21 years.<\/p>\n

But it will take something equally as special for them to repeat.<\/p>\n

Fagan admitted he hadn’t thought about if they could go all the way without Neale.<\/p>\n

“I’m just worried about trying to win a game next week,” he said.<\/p>\n

“He’s a great player so obviously he helps, and we’ve got quite a few other guys who are injured at the moment and not playing, so whether that adds up to too many injuries and makes it difficult.<\/p>\n

“But give a lot of credit to Geelong \u2026 they were magnificent.”<\/p>\n

Brisbane’s lacklustre performance against the Cats showed they are missing the star power up forward of Joe Daniher, who retired after last year’s grand final win.<\/p>\n

“There won’t be an overreaction,” Fagan said.<\/p>\n

“We’ll just do what we always do \u2014 have a look at the vision and find out where we made errors, and how we can improve.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

“For next week, it’ll just be as simple as that.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got a lot of faith in this group.<\/p>\n

“We can make a drama out of it, but they’ve been in the last seven final series and done some pretty good work in that time.<\/p>\n

“It’s not always going to be a bed of roses.<\/p>\n

“Every now and then you’re going to meet an opponent, like we did, who were red-hot.<\/p>\n

“We’ll just stay calm and do what we always do.”<\/p>\n

If the Lions are able to avoid going out in straight sets and win through to a preliminary final, they would face Collingwood at the MCG.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The banged-up Brisbane Lions will be without important forward Eric Hipwood, and likely star midfielder Lachie Neale, for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[638,64,63,3237,37348,25875,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-122842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-brisbane-lions","12":"tag-eric-hipwood","13":"tag-lachie-neale","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122842","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=122842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}