Sliding contender slammed for 'baffling' repeat of GF mistakes as ...

Brisbane has been accused of not learning from its grand final mistakes after suffering another shock loss to open its 2024 season.

Fox Footy’s Leigh Montagna highlighted alarming time-on vision from both Sunday’s loss to Fremantle and the grand final defeat to Collingwood where Brisbane coughed up bags of goals.

“How have they not gone to work on this in the summer? It’s baffling,” he lamented on First Crack.

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“They’ve got work to do.”

In an alarming trend, the Lions coughed up another eight-goal run against Fremantle - the same as their Opening Round loss to Carlton.

Fox Footy’s David King accused the Lions of being “rudderless” without reigning two-time Brownlow Medallist Lachie Neale in Sunday’s loss.

And to make matters worse, coach Chris Fagan confirmed they were another defender down with Conor McKenna suffering a hamstring injury, off the back of the season-ending ACL tear to star Keidean Coleman.

“They are just getting too much wrong,” King said on First Crack.

“There’s just too many things that are slightly off at Brisbane.

“I think 2023 was the year they were there to win it and they’ve left it on the deck.

“They’ve got an unbelievable list ... but now everything is clunky.

“In the absence of Lachie Neale, they were rudderless.”

Montagna questioned if there were “cracks” appearing after the side’s dominance in recent years.

“I don’t think a premiership contender, genuine premiership contenders, concede a run of eight goals in a game. They’re better than that,” Montagna said.

“(Neale) did mention there was selfishness. And that players were basically sh**ting on their teammates. So what was the response? Again they conceded a run of eight goals.

“They couldn’t stop it (against Fremantle).”

Brisbane now get a bye before taking on Collingwood in an Easter Thursday blockbuster.

“They’ve got a bye and a chance to regroup,” Montagna said.

“Zip-three is a bit of a different story than zip-two.”

Lions coach Chris Fagan admitted his side was “beaten up” by the Dockers during the eight-goal run that set-up their victory.

“Two weeks in a row now the middle part of the game has been a problem to us and I’ve never encountered that before with this group,” he said.

“We’ve been zero and two before and made top four.

“We’ll just have to think clearly about what’s going on and try and find some solutions.”

Along with McKenna, the Lions lost Darcy Gardiner to a suspected PCL injury with the defender subbed out of the contest at half time.

“We needed to get more out of the players that we had in the team today than we actually did,” Fagan said.

“There were just silly mistakes that guys made ... just inexplicable things.

“Something to work on.”

There is some good news for the Lions heading into the bye with Neale expected to be passed fit for the clash with Collingwood.