{"id":173406,"date":"2025-09-27T18:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T18:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/173406\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T18:44:09","slug":"lions-defeat-cats-after-goal-rush-from-cameron-mccluggage-norm-smith-medal-was-will-ashcroft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/173406\/","title":{"rendered":"Lions defeat Cats after goal rush from Cameron, McCluggage; Norm Smith Medal was Will Ashcroft"},"content":{"rendered":"

As emotions spilled out in the bowels of the MCG on Saturday night, Lions coach Chris Fagan revealed his group had embraced a famous Nelson Mandela quote as part of their journey to claiming back-to-back premierships and becoming the competition\u2019s benchmark.<\/p>\n

The Lions are again the toast of the AFL, having strode to a 47-point win over Geelong before a crowd of 100,022 at the home of football on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Lions<\/p>\n

Lions coach Chris Fagan cops a Gatorade shower.Credit: Joe Armao<\/p>\n

The Cats led by a point when midfielder Max Holmes drilled a long bomb less than 14 minutes into the third term, but the uncompromising Lions booted 12 of the next 17 goals, including the final three of the third, to take charge.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

This victory added to their success against Sydney in last year\u2019s grand final, and was the club\u2019s fifth flag this century \u2013 the most in the competition.<\/p>\n

A beaming but damp Fagan, having had a Gatorade bucket tipped on him by Dayne Zorko, said a quote from Mandela, the former president of South Africa and anti-apartheid activist, had been crucial to the Lions\u2019 rise \u2013 the club having been mired in mediocrity when Fagan took charge in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have got a saying that\u2019s up on our wall \u2013 it\u2019s a famous Nelson Mandela quote. We never win. We never lose. We either win or we learn, and that\u2019s the attitude we have tried to take,\u201d Fagan said.<\/p>\n

Click here to read the full story.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As emotions spilled out in the bowels of the MCG on Saturday night, Lions coach Chris Fagan revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-173406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173406","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=173406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}