{"id":691161,"date":"2026-05-24T08:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T08:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691161\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T08:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T08:48:10","slug":"afl-2026-chris-fagan-press-conference-historic-score-in-brisbane-lions-loss-to-gws-giants-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691161\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL 2026: Chris Fagan press conference, historic score in Brisbane Lions loss to GWS Giants, video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brisbane coach Chris Fagan conceded his Lions are \u201cgoing backwards\u201d after falling by 78 points to the Giants in a historic \u201cslaughter\u201d<\/a> on Sunday. <\/p>\n

GWS, which kicked an all-time club-high 26.10 (166), booted 14 unanswered goals in the third quarter \u2014 the highest-scoring third term in VFL\/AFL history \u2014 to make it back-to-back blowout losses for the premiers. <\/p>\n

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GWS\u2019 14.2 (86) third quarter is now equal-fourth highest quarter score in history. <\/p>\n

The result leaves 6-5 Brisbane \u2014 which entered the round 10th for points against but seems set to fall further \u2014 languishing in eighth on the ladder, with a daunting matchup against ladder-leading Fremantle next on the menu. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just an amazing performance from the Giants, and the Lions \u2026 they won\u2019t believe what they\u2019re putting out here at the moment,\u201d Gerard Healy said in the third quarter on the Fox Footy broadcast. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just no urgency, no desperation \u2014 they\u2019re getting slaughtered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Probed for his thoughts on what went wrong in the premiership quarter, Fagan said Brisbane was \u201csmashed everywhere\u201d and admitted \u201cnothing we tried worked\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tight game until half-time. Both teams had their moments. I certainly didn\u2019t see it coming at half-time,\u201d Fagan told reporters in Sydney of the avalanche. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it did, nothing we tried worked. They played an unbelievable third quarter. I mean, when you look at the scores, we lost the first quarter by six, and even for the second quarter, we win the last quarter, but we lose the third quarter by 83 points. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe got smashed everywhere – at the contest, ball movement. We couldn\u2019t stop it. They just controlled the game, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

GWS kicked three goals from its defensive half, seven goals from turnovers, and six from stoppage.<\/p>\n

READ ALSO: \u2018Mercy rule?\u2019 Record-breaking \u2018slaughter\u2019 exposes daunting question for premiers<\/a><\/p>\n

GWS smash VFL\/AFL record against Lions | 01:01<\/p>\n

Fagan said third quarters \u201chave been a problem\u201d for the Lions over the past three weeks. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a good lead against Carlton a few weeks ago and squandered a fair bit of that in the third quarter. Geelong got us in the third quarter last week, and it happened again today,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we need to have a talk to the group and work out what\u2019s happening there. I mean, we tried putting a player behind the ball. We tried a whole lot of things. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut when you can\u2019t win the footy and you can\u2019t get possession of it, this game\u2019s pretty hard to play. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s been the pattern for the last three weeks in third quarters. We\u2019ve just been beaten in the contest and in the clearance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fagan, who added that his players\u2019 body language \u201cwasn\u2019t good\u201d and admitted his side was \u201cgoing backwards\u201d, did take some solace in the fact that his side has been here before. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll take a little bit of heart from the fact that a couple of years ago, the Giants beat us up in a similar fashion in Canberra. And we got written off, fair enough,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe should get written off tonight too, but we\u2019re able to respond to that and make finals and go on to win a premiership. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, this is one moment in time. It\u2019s not a great moment. It\u2019s not the whole lot of my coaching career at the Brisbane Lions. I can assure you of that. But it is a moment that we can sort of choose whether we get better from it or we continue to go backwards. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause at the moment, we\u2019re going backwards, and we\u2019re nowhere near a premiership fancy at all. We\u2019re just battling to find our form at the moment. And that\u2019s been the case for the last two and a half games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch dissects GWS’ historic 3rd quarter | 01:40<\/p>\n

Dual premiership coach Fagan also revealed the message he relayed to his side post-match in the rooms. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlong similar lines to what I\u2019m saying to you. I felt like I needed to talk to them straight away,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI always believe when you have a bad performance like this, you\u2019ve just got to stick together and keep everyone on the same page, and that\u2019s what the conversation was all about. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always an optimist. As I said, we\u2019ve had some bad losses before, but we\u2019ve been able to turn ourselves around from that. So I\u2019m hoping that the work we do this week will help us do that. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no guarantee, as I said, we\u2019ve got a pretty good opponent coming towards us and we\u2019ve got to improve enormously, not just a little bit, enormously, to be competitive against them. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019ve seen this group do it before, so I maintain some optimism about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane coach Chris Fagan conceded his Lions are \u201cgoing backwards\u201d after falling by 78 points to the Giants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,19057,337323,64,63,689,7292,55,639,337324,74449,3237,2667,3244,54481,139690,31756,337322,3231,673,677,13219,31712,668,337321,85,670],"class_list":["post-691161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-alastair-lynch","tag-amazing-performance","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-capital-territory","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-back-to-back-blowout-losses","tag-body-language","tag-brisbane-lions","tag-canberra","tag-chris-fagan","tag-coaching-career","tag-dual-premiership-coach","tag-gerard-healy","tag-historic-score","tag-jack-jovanovski","tag-new-south-wales","tag-oceania","tag-premiership-credentials","tag-premiership-quarter","tag-press-conference","tag-side-post-match","tag-sports","tag-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691161","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=691161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}