That was a sensational start to the AFL finals - now let’s see whether the other three games to rise to this standard of suspense and emotion.
Thanks to Claire Siracusa for a tireless performance doing the graphics and helping out with all manner of things behind the scenes while I also need to thank Michael Gleeson for his expert posts and Andrew Stafford for his exceptional reporting from the ground.
We will be back tomorrow night and over the weekend with blogs for each finals match.
I appreciate the comments and interactions tonight and hope you will join us tomorrow evening for the Melbourne versus Sydney qualifying final clash at the MCG.
I’ll leave you with a farewell message from Shane Edwards who will now retire.
‘The future is exciting’: Hardwick says Tiger cubs will learn from this loss
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More from Damien Hardwick’s press conference.
Did you feel like you didn’t capitalise enough on. That it felt like you had a lot of space in your forward line but you weren’t able to cash in?
I think so. I think we had some opportunities where if we were cleaner we would have been okay. With just made some wrong decisions. The fact of the matter is what we do get and what we are excited about is I think we had a number of players that played their first final that will take us a long way into the future which is exciting. They will learn from it. It is a really tough lesson to learn, no question. They will grow from the experience. Unfortunately, we just weren’t clean enough with our cull execution tonight.
Tyler Sonsie celebrates a goal.AFL Photos
What did you make of Dusty’s performance tonight?
To be expected. The challenge was obviously with Dion going down early, which hurts the balance of our midfield mix and you probably don’t envisage that happening, but the fact of the matter is that it did. There would always be challenges to lose a quality player such as Dion.
How disruptive was the last 24 hours been for him? Was it a distraction? Did you have to talk to him?
Of course. We worry about the welfare of his players, but he manages to control that and gets on with it. It is something that I can’t comment on because there is an investigation going on. We will work our way through that over the next week.
Just on Dion, how significant was that hamstring? How, what do you mean? Would he have missed the rest of the finals series?
I am not sure. I imagine. Once again, from a speculation point of view. I can say that, but probably touch-and-go moving forward obviously.
11.17pm on Sep 1, 2022
‘It summed up our year’: Hardwick reflects on loss
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Tigers coach Damien Hardwick spoke to the media post game.
What was your message to the players having gone so close?
It summed up our year to be fair. We think about we are in the fight every game. I think we play a style of game. I think we play a style of game that allows us to do that, but the fact of the matter is the things that haunted us throughout the year, haunted us again tonight. The fundamentals of the game, we just weren’t good enough for long enough. That is as harsh a lesson as the game will teach us, unfortunately. You just got to be good enough for a sustained period and we weren’t tonight.
Dion Prestia.AFL Photos
What did you think about the goal review?
Yeah. I don’t know. I just feel the technology is not good enough. It hasn’t been for a long period of time. I think we put a lot of money into it and, clearly, it is indecisive still. We have got goal umpires - pick which way you want to go.
Did you speak to Tommy about his reaction because it didn’t look from the outside he thought it was a goal?
No, I didn’t. It is bigger than that. The whole thing the technology is that it is not at the level it needs to be. Either get it better or don’t have it.
Is your concern it was deemed a goal by the goal umpire and it been overridden by perhaps some inconclusive evidence?
That is for you guys to figure out. I can’t make that call. I sit there and see the same vision as you do. I see the umpire make a call. Generally, it has got to be definitive to overturn it.
Would you like to see some investment into the technology over the summer?
Why don’t with let the umpires make the call? They are paid to do a job. Let them do a job or don’t have them. One of the two. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I was pretty adamant when the first came out. The fact of the matter is what we saw was a pretty good game of footy. One side had to lose and unfortunately, that was us tonight.
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11.06pm on Sep 1, 2022
‘Made of the right stuff’: Fagan rapt for Lions
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More from Chris Fagan’s press conference.
What is your overriding emotion? We have heard the reports all week. You said the way to quieten them is with a win. How do you feel and the way it unfolded?
Probably in a way we want to win more finals. We are not going to get carried away with it tonight and give ourselves a pat on the back. If there was ever a way to win a final and you wanted to show you were made of the right stuff I think tonight we showed that. We looked probably gone a few times and our players could easily have got disappointed with the Oscar injury so early in the game. That is a massive blow. He is an important player to us. For our guys to just - we lost Daniel McStay early in the first final last year I felt like that affected us mentally. There was something that with talked about during the pre-season and tonight that didn’t affect us mentally. The boys kept playing. I like that about our effort because in finals it often comes down to what is going on in your mind, your need to hang in there even when things are not going well, and we did that. So I am really proud of our group tonight. It is a step forward if our development.
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Young Darcy Wilmot had a good game for his first game?
Yeah. It is interesting, I thought, oh, well, even if we lost tonight, this thought went through my head, we have found a player. For him to make his debut and to come out and play like that and have some pretty good moments, speaks volumes for him and I am hopeful he will be a Brisbane Lions’ player for a long, long time.
11.00pm on Sep 1, 2022
‘One of the great finals performances’: Fagan praises Neale
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How are the nerves, Fages?
They were a bit jangled, especially, when we got in front there was a minute to go and I thought we have got to kill the clock here. I thought our blokes did a brilliant job of just forcing stoppage after stoppage and surging the ball forward. They played that little snippet of the game with a great deal of intelligence. I was pretty pleased. A Richmond player had the ball - I was thinking, don’t take off. He didn’t. The clock kept ticking and it was time to celebrate. It was a brilliant game of football. Probably, Richmond didn’t deserve to lose and neither did we. There is not many better games of football I have ever been involved in.
Dustin Martin is tackled by Lachie Neale.AFL Photos
Joe Daniher, in last year’s finals but he bobs up with two goals in the fourth quarter and did what Joe does. There were types when he was a bit of a villain and then he was the hero in the end.
I’m really pleased for him. That is what we got him to the club for, for those big moments. He delivered tonight when it mattered and he and Daniel McStay had to share the ruck duties after Oscar got injured. In particular, Dan who played 80 per cent of the game in the ruck. He was enormous for us tonight.
Speaking of blokes who delivered, Lachie Neale, a finals performance for the ages?
It was how he did it, though. He is so clean. It was a high-pressure fast-paced game and his ability to collect the ball cleanly and give it to his teammates wasn’t standing. Yeah, it was one of the great finals games you will ever see.
10.55pm on Sep 1, 2022
A special mention for Joe Daniher
By Michael Gleeson
Michael Gleeson, who compiled the lists of the best players the ones that needed to do more, required a special category for the man who kicked the match-winner.
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10.53pm on Sep 1, 2022
Daniher goes from villain to hero as Lions beat Tigers in a thriller
By Andrew Stafford
This elimination final was fast, it was frenetic, it involved not a little bit of luck, and it featured an incredible 17 lead changes. And in the end, it was Joe Daniher – who’d had the sort of match that only Joe can have – who produced the last of them.
With his third goal, scrambled from the square, the Brisbane Lions finally sunk Richmond, the most dangerous floaters in this year’s finals series. The Lions progress to a semi-final next week. For the Tigers, it meant oblivion for season 2022.
The Lions celebrate their last goal.AFL Photos
For much of the last quarter, they had looked like they might hang on. Old premiership heroes rose to the top: Jack Riewoldt, with two daggers from close to the boundary line; Marlion Pickett, who might have played his best game since his legendary debut in the 2019 grand final.