Chris Fagan is renowned for being a very positive and optimistic coach.
The Brisbane Lions have more often than not responded to his affable ways over the past few years, but after their Round 20 loss to Hawthorn they needed a rocket.
After three defeats in four weeks, Brisbane required a win to reinstall hope and revitalise their morale with finals on the horizon.
According to Gerard Healy, Fagan had some serious and “confronting” one on ones with his Lions in the lead-up to last weekend’s meeting with Fremantle in Perth in a bid to break their run of poor form.
“I loved the way he coached,” Healy said on Sportsday.
“He said basically, ‘Ok, (Hugh) McCluggage and (Jarrod) Berry, they’re talking these two up, (Adam) Cerra and (Andrew) Brayshaw. Righto, it’s a battle, let’s see who’s got the best young guys’. They went hard.
“Afterwards, Dayne Zorko was interviewed on Fox Footy. He was pretty hard to get a light comment from and he mentioned a couple of times how difficult the week had been.
“My understanding is the coach got them all in individually and questioned their want to be great, their willingness to work hard enough and gee, didn’t he get a response.
“From my understanding he might have had a chat to each and every individual and just asked them.
“It was pretty clear that they’d had a very confronting week up at Joondalup.
“He’s a super positive coach, he very rarely goes on a negative, but I think it was time that he questioned where they’re at and he got the response.”
Whatever Fagan specifically said it worked as the Lions smashed the Dockers by 64 points to return to fifth position.
They’ll be intent on taking that ferocious mindset into this weekend’s meeting with Collingwood as they strive to keep their faint top four hopes alive.
