Darcy Fort will have a new ruck partner when the Lions take on the Cats in a Friday Night blockbuster at GMHBA Stadium.

Fort will lead the ruck division against his former club with Tom Fullarton to provide support.

Fullarton returns to the side for his 15th AFL game as replacement for the suspended Oscar McInerney.

It is the only change Senior Coach Chris Fagan has made to the side that defeated the Kangaroos by 108 points last week.

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Fort has been a revelation since returning to Brisbane to join the side he barracked for as a child and Fagan said he was excited to see how the 28-year-old handled the extra responsibility McInerney’s absence had handed him.

“I'm really confident Darcy will be able to set up and do a larger percentage of the ruck work than he's done in previous weeks,’’ he said.

“We'll bring Tom Fulllarton into the team. Tom's done a lot of ruck work over the summer and has played that forward/second ruck role for us before.

“We're doing a like for like replacement if you like.’’

Although the Lions were comfortable winners last week against North Melbourne, Fagan said postgame if he could find one area where he’d like to see an improvement it would be clearances.

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Against a Cats side that is hard to beat in Geelong, that will be a key area of the game.

“That's been an area of focus for us all season so far,’’ he said.

“The one thing we know about Geelong is you can't compete with Geelong unless you compete at clearance and contested ball.

“It's the big battle tomorrow night and we’d like to think we can improve on what we did last week.’’