The Brisbane Lions will head to Adelaide this week for the AFL’s Gather Round looking to post the best start to a season in club history and equal two other long-standing winning streaks.

If such a thing is possible, the Lions will have a ‘home ground’ advantage at Norwood on Saturday, having at least played there once when they beat North Melbourne by 42 points last year, the Bulldogs have never played there.

It is a factor because Norwood Oval, 165m wide and 110m long, is 5m narrower than Geelong’s Kardinia Park, the AFL’s narrowest venue.

Norwood Oval is the original home of Lions triple premiership player Martin Pike and dual Brisbane club champion Joel Patfull, plus Neil Hein, a member of the first Bears side in 1987, ex-Bears Mark Buckley and Matthew Ahmat, ex-Lion Adam Heuskes, and ex-Fitzroy pair Matthew Primus and Danny Morton, who were members of the club’s last side in 1996.

Brisbane, who beat North Melbourne by 75 points in Mt. Barker in the first iteration of Gather Round in 2023, will be the first AFL club to play at Norwood twice after being one of four clubs not scheduled to play at Adelaide Oval in the first three years of Gather Round.

And while some will question why the defending premiers have been denied the big stage, it won’t concern coach Fagan if they can turn a 2-0 Gather Round record, they share with Collingwood, Geelong, GWS, Port Adelaide and Sydney into 3-0.

Set to play the Western Bulldogs at Norwood Oval on Saturday afternoon, the Lions have won nine games in a row – Round 24 and four finals last year and now four games this year.

That includes five consecutive wins interstate against GWS at Sydney Showground, Geelong and Sydney at the MCG, Sydney at the SCG and last weekend Richmond at the MCG.

A win over the Dogs will give the Lions their first 5-0 start to a season in club history.

Their previous best was in 2003, when they had a Round 3 draw with North Melbourne at Docklands in Round 3 after wins over Essendon at the Gabba and Port Adelaide at Football Park, and before Gabba wins over Collingwood and the Bulldogs.

They won again in Round 6 against Geelong at the Gabba before the streak ended at the hands of Sydney at the SCG in Round 7.

The 4-0 start this year is already the Lions’ best under Chris Fagan and with a win over the Dogs this week, Fagan’s men will equal the club’s second-longest winning streak overall and the second-longest interstate winning streak in the club’s 876-game history.

A 10^th consecutive win would match the streak from Round 15 to the semi-finals of 1999 and would rank behind only the 20-game winning streak from Round 10 2001 to Round 4 2002.

That extraordinary run, which included the Brisbane’s first premiership in 2001, is the equal second-longest winning streak in AFL history, behind Geelong’s 23 consecutive wins in 1952-53-54 and equal with the 20 consecutive wins of Collingwood in 1928-29 and Essendon in 2000.

Fitzroy’s longest winning streak was 14 games from 1898-99.