\n Chris Fagan is keen to welcome Keidean Coleman back into Brisbane’s best 22 this year\n <\/p>\n
Keidean Coleman during Brisbane’s match against Narrm in R10, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
AFTER Keidean Coleman missed Brisbane’s back-to-back premierships, coach Chris Fagan believes the luckless defender can be a pivotal part of their bid for a third straight flag.<\/p>\n
Coleman finished second in the Norm Smith Medal voting after a star turn in Brisbane’s 2023 Grand Final loss to Collingwood.<\/p>\n
But the silky-skilled defender suffered a season-ending ACL tear in Opening Round in 2024, then played just one AFL game last year before a quad strain.<\/p>\n
With gun defender Brandon Starcevich departing for West Coast in October, the Lions will welcome Coleman’s quality.<\/p>\n
Keidean Coleman during Brisbane’s training session at Brighton Homes Arena on February 5, 2025. Picture: Getty Images<\/p>\n
“Keidean Coleman’s back in doing drills and he looks as fit as I’ve ever seen him,” Fagan said.<\/p>\n
“I think he’s pretty much been two years out of footy. He had a couple of games last year. I think he’s learned a lot about how to prepare his body and it’s the fittest I’ve ever seen him.<\/p>\n
“So fingers crossed he has no more setbacks and he’s ready to go. He’s going to be a really important player for us with ‘Starce’ heading back to Perth.<\/p>\n
“It’s a good bonus to have a bloke potentially coming back into your team that was runner-up in a Norm Smith medal in a Grand Final not so long ago.<\/p>\n
Chris Fagan (left) and Brandon Starcevich watch on during the 2025 Toyota Grand Final. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
“So I hope for his sake that he can get a good go at it this year.”<\/p>\n
Zac Bailey, Jarrod Berry, Jaspa Fletcher and Noah Answerth are all tracking to be ready for the start of the season after off-season surgery.<\/p>\n
The likes of Lincoln McCarthy (knee) and Tom Doedee are also looking to make an impact after injuries.<\/p>\n
The Lions snapped up Oscar Allen and Sam Draper as free agents and drafted academy gun Daniel Annable in the off-season, and Fagan believes the pressure for spots will help keep motivation high.<\/p>\n
Sam Draper during a running session at Brisbane on November 24, 2025. Picture: Instagram\/@brisbanelions<\/p>\n
“The good thing is that this group knows what it feels like to win a premiership, and that’s a pretty good feeling that you might want to try and achieve again,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They’ve put themselves into a position where there’s three or four years to go in this decade. Can we be the best team of the decade?<\/p>\n
“I don’t know whether that gets them excited or not, but we’ll keep searching around for things to motivate.<\/p>\n
“But I think a lot of them know that there’s some pretty good players that have come into the club, and there’s some pretty good players coming back from injury, so there’s no complacency, I don’t think.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be pretty hard to get a spot and that’s good.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Fagan is keen to welcome Keidean Coleman back into Brisbane’s best 22 this year Keidean Coleman during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-399173","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","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399173","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=399173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}