All-Australian Bailey had rejected a $10m offer<\/a> from the Crows to sign a new eight-year contract with Brisbane.<\/p>\nBailey admitted it had been a tough \u201c50-50\u201d call on whether he would remain with the Lions or go to Adelaide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was interest there (from the Crows) and something that I had to consider, but I just love it here so much, and I really wanted to get a deal done here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese things just take a little bit of time \u2026 but for me, there was no real rush. I was just going to take things at my own pace.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first half of the year, I didn\u2019t even really deal with it at all. I just wanted to go out there and play good footy, and that\u2019s what I was doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see some people how they handle their contract years \u2013 some people go one way and perform really well, and some will go the other way.<\/p>\n
‘Coaches know this is a blood sport’ | 03:15<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year I\u2019ve been able to perform to a really high standard, which has been good.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now on me to make sure I keep trying to improve and take my game to another level. There\u2019s a lot of trust in me to perform, so now it\u2019s on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bailey was also thrilled about Zorko extending his career by at least another years, saying he had \u201cmodelled\u201d his game off the former Brisbane skipper.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been unbelievable,\u201d Bailey said of Zorko.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to learn a lot off him. He took over the captaincy of this club when we really needed someone to stand up, and he had a massive impact on this club and has been a leader for a lot of our young guys coming through.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s had an enormous impact on this club.\u201d<\/p>\n
“You and your reflected glory!” | 00:49<\/p>\n
After the disappointment of last weekend\u2019s heavy loss to Sydney, the Lions must win on Saturday at the Gabba to keep their dreams alive of a third successive flag.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just goes to show in this game, if your mindset isn\u2019t right, you\u2019re very vulnerable,\u201d Zorko said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a really stern review, and the energy that we saw at training on Tuesday was really what it should be like.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lions are likely to be forced into at least one change, with defender Noah Answerth not training on Thursday after suffering an ankle injury in Brisbane\u2019s loss to the Swans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Already buoyed by Zac Bailey\u2019s decision to commit to the club long-term, the Lions have received a further…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-886568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886568","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=886568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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