Brisbane has conceded its defence was a massive hole in a side that was just two wins away from a premiership in 2022 and has initiated a renewed focus throughout the pre-season.
The Lions scored 2147 points last season, the second most of any club. But as skipper Dayne Zorko acknowledges, the club’s defence was “really poor”.
Brisbane averaged just shy of 82 points against in 2022, more than a number of teams to miss the top eight in Port Adelaide, Carlton and St Kilda.
There’s little doubt that Chris Fagan’s side was one of the more exciting to watch last year with their attacking style, but Zorko says the club has tweaked its game-plan over the summer.
“I think defensively last year we just leaked too many points, I think there were three or four games where we conceded over 100 points and in previous years we hadn’t done that,” Zorko told SENQ’s Pat and Heals.
“Obviously we know we’ve got a lot of firepower in our forward line, we know we can kick a score but defensively we’ve just been really poor the last 12 months and that’s an area of focus we’ve really honed in on in the pre-season.
“The rest of our game certainly needs some finetuning, but I think the glaring one for us was defence.”
Zorko suggested the Lions were looking to wipe around 10 points off their 2022 average conceded score in 2023.
Geelong, who smashed Brisbane in the Preliminary Final on the way to its first premiership in over a decade, conceded an average of 76 points per game last year.
“I think a lot of teams will be honing in on that, you see the last few years teams that have the lowest points differential, keeping teams under a certain amount, 10 or 11 goals – roughly that’s the number – tend to win the premiership,” the 33-year-old.
“Geelong did it last year and Melbourne did it the year before that.
“That’s a really important benchmark for us to try and achieve, we’ve changed some things up this pre-season and worked really hard on it and hopefully we can see some benefits in the trial matches that are coming up in the next few weeks.”
The Lions have also looked to seek a mental edge over the pre-season.
“Mindset was a big thing we focused on in this pre-season as well, moving onto the next thing and what’s important now, and I think that will all help,” Zorko added.
“You’re not going to be able to play perfect football every time you play… us being footballers, most of us are perfectionists and we want to be absolutely perfect all of the time but unfortunately that’s not the case.
“So what’s important now, what can you do to influence the next contest, have you got the ball or not got the ball, what are you doing, they’re a few things we’ve tried to put in action over this pre-season.”
Recent scans indicated a small hamstring tear for Zorko, who will miss the club’s next intraclub game. However, he’s likely to be fit for trial matches against other teams later this month and stated he’s still able to run at speed.