{"id":35185,"date":"2026-06-05T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=35185"},"modified":"2026-06-11T10:06:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:06:43","slug":"the-brisbane-lions-blueprint-for-sustained-performance","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/the-brisbane-lions-blueprint-for-sustained-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brisbane Lions Blueprint for Sustained Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 5 Jun 2026 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

The Brisbane Lions Blueprint for Sustained Performance<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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From day one of his tenure as Senior Coach Chris Fagan has sought to align the team\u2019s leaders, engender a sense of collective ownership and establish a culture where learning is prized.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
When Chris Fagan took the reins as Senior Coach of the Brisbane Lions ahead of the 2017 season, he was nervous.<\/h6>\n

Not only was he walking into a foundering team (it is rare for a coach to inherit a winning environment) but he was keenly aware that his own modest playing career meant that he arrived with less coaching clout than some of his AFL peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I had to work harder to earn the players\u2019 respect,\u201d Fagan told an audience at Leaders Meet: Australia<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

For all that, he was no novice. The reputation he had built at Hawthorn (first as Head of Coaching and Development, then as General Manager of Football Operations) between 2008 and 2016 is what attracted the Lions in the first place.<\/p>\n

Fagan, with typical self-awareness, understood the assignment. \u201cI think the key is when the players realise that you\u2019re just there to help them and make them better and that\u2019s what you\u2019re going to bring to work every day,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it makes it easier to coach them. They know that you\u2019re on their side and you want them to be as good as they can be, both as athletes and people, which is what I tried to do in the early days. I think that works and resonates with young men.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first two seasons on Fagan\u2019s watch were poor but from 2019 onwards they have made finals each year. In 2024, they won the Grand Final; in 2025, they won it again for good measure.<\/p>\n

As such, few are better placed to answer one of sport\u2019s most pressing questions: what is it that environments that sustain success do?<\/p>\n

Fagan has ensured that four factors work in his favour.<\/p>\n

1. Everyone understands their value and how they can contribute<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fagan recalled his arrival at the Gabba ahead of his first pre-season. \u201cI wanted to develop a group that could almost coach themselves and lead themselves, but we were far from that when I first walked into the club,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His first move was to arrange an interview with every player. \u201cI had three questions: what\u2019s good about this footy club? What\u2019s not so good? And if you were me and you were in my position, what would you do to make it better? I wanted to start that way because I wanted everyone to understand that for our club to get better, everyone had to play a role and that you would be listened to.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took him two months to sit down with everyone. \u201cSome interviews went for two hours, some went on for 20 minutes,\u201d he explained while looking at Lions co-captain Harris Andrews in the Leaders audience. \u201cHe can probably remember his interview,\u201d Fagan said, addressing Andrews directly. \u201cHe probably didn\u2019t say too much then. Mate, you\u2019d be there for an hour now, wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

That moment of levity between the coach and a veteran player demonstrated how successful Fagan\u2019s efforts have been on that front.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThe idea was to go \u2018well, we\u2019re all in this together, we\u2019re going to build it together, and we\u2019re going to find out what\u2019s not working and we\u2019re going to talk about what we can do to get better; and that\u2019s the way I wanted to start because that\u2019s the way I wanted to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine years later, the personnel have changed but, as Fagan said, \u201cit\u2019s still that club to this day.\u201d Those interviews still happen and buy-in remains strong. \u201cIt\u2019s a force. It\u2019s not one person, such as the coach, doing the job. It\u2019s a whole lot of people getting it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Failure is framed as a learning opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n

In reflecting on that first round of player interviews back in 2017, Fagan remembers being staggered by some of the responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the players said that it was better to be in rehab and not playing than to be playing, which I was astonished by,\u201d he said. \u201cIt probably said something about the culture of the club and that it wasn\u2019t necessarily a safe place to work at being the best version of yourself. So these were strange things to hear, but I knew that you could fix those things with a bit of work. It was just going to take a bit of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two elements were critical: Fagan needed to remove the fear and ensure that the team was learning from its failures (of which there were plenty in those first two years).<\/p>\n

\u201cI always like to think that we almost failed our way to the top,\u201d he added, while emphasising the importance of a growth mindset. \u201cWe learned so many lessons along the way and, in the end, we were able to hold up some silverware because I think we treated failure in a really sensible way at our footy club, because it wasn\u2019t easy in the early days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fagan has joked in the past that his team in 2017 and 2018 were the \u201chappiest bunch of losers<\/a>\u201d having won just five games in each campaign. Their fortunes were transformed from 2019 onwards when they won 16 games. \u201cWe went from being a team that couldn\u2019t win to a team that could win home and away games; from being a team that couldn\u2019t win finals to a team that can now win finals.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Everyone is aligned from the boardroom to the locker room<\/strong><\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, Fagan quickly worked to build relationships with the Lions\u2019 CEO Greg Swann and former Senior Coach Leigh Matthews, who joined the board upon his retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI arranged to have dinner with those two men and their wives once a week; and we\u2019ve been doing that for nine years,\u201d said Fagan. \u201cIt\u2019s been invaluable because I\u2019ve got two allies that work amongst the board; and people at higher level at the club that have always been able to tell my story and tell the story of the team to those who needed to know it. So I\u2019ve always felt very safe in the entire time I\u2019ve been at Brisbane because I took that approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not necessarily something that would have occurred to Fagan earlier in his career. \u201cI would have been just so into the team and working at that level that I wouldn\u2019t have thought it was important to manage up, but it is incredibly important because those people can help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. External noise is dismissed in the face of facts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fagan is noted for his calm pitch side demeanour. \u201cLeigh Matthews always says to me in terms of coaching that the coach has to be the calmest person in the place even though you\u2019re not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It is part of Fagan\u2019s efforts to manage the external noise around his team. \u201cIn this country, there\u2019s a lot of experts out there who comment on the game and their favourite activity is trying to bring coaches down. Your job as a coach is to bulletproof your environment against that and always deal with the facts,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s always helped our players and our coaching group to stay on track when you lose a few games and it gets a little bit rocky, which it always will during a football season. You never know what\u2019s around the corner, but you\u2019ve just got to build your culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How to Spot the Need for Change and to Respond Effectively<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n