Senior Coach Chris Fagan says the off-season has taken “forever” and that he’s feeling the expectations as the Lions head into Saturday night’s season opener against West Coast at the Gabba.

Speaking on this week’s episode of The Roar Deal podcast, Fagan told hosts Michael Whiting and Dom Fay the off-season has dragged on.

“As soon as one season finishes you start preparing for the next,” Fagan said.

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“In some instances, with your recruiting and list management stuff, you’re preparing for next season now, so it’s been a long process. The players have been fantastic, so have the staff, you just want to go out and measure ourselves now and see how we’ve progressed over the summer.”

But while the off-season may have dragged on, it hasn’t meant that Fagan and his coaching staff have put any extra work into this week’s opponent.

“I don’t actually think extra preparation helps you. Sometimes you can over-cook it, because you can just watch so many things and see so many things,” he said.

“We’ve tried to keep it a normal week, so I’ve kept an eye on the West Coast games during the pre-season, but I’d do that anyway. I’ve been watching North Melbourne too and Port Adelaide, because we play them early in the season. So, you just do that out of interest.

“But no, just the normal routine. We didn’t really talk to our players about West Coast until yesterday (Tuesday), and we’ll ramp it up towards the weekend but not so much about them more about ourselves and what we want to do.”