The Brisbane Lions are last, but they don't want the season to stop.
Saturday's crushing QClash win over Gold Coast was the Lions' fourth victory since the
With just two rounds remaining, they need to win one, or possibly both, of their matches against Melbourne and North Melbourne to avoid the wooden spoon.
But with under-20s Harris Andrews, Eric Hipwood, Hugh McCluggage, Jarrod Berry and the injured Alex Witherden turning heads, and breakout seasons from Lewy Taylor, Dan McStay, Nick Robertson and Sam Mayes, there's a buzz around the Gabba again.
Livewire midfielder Dayne Zorko, who himself must be in All Australian contention for his blistering season, says he wishes there were more matches left in 2017.
"It's not often you get to this stage of the year being last on the ladder and you want the season to keep going, but the energy is really high around the club," Zorko said on Monday.
"There's a lot of enthusiasm, and I think we're just looking forward to each week and getting another chance to implement our gameplan and try to get a win."
And the Lions are hopeful the rest of the competition is seeing their improvement.
"I hope teams don't just think they can roll us … I hope there's an element of 'we really need to play well otherwise Brisbane could catch us off our guard'," Zorko said.
"That's definitely something we wanted to achieve coming into the season. Not saying it's there at the moment, I'm hopefully feeling teams have to play at their best against us."
One team that will have to be on their guard is Sunday's opponent Melbourne, who moved back into a congested top eight with a win over St Kilda.
Amongst the improvement of Chris Fagan's first season in charge, the young Lions have battled against the bigger-bodied teams like Geelong, Sydney and Port Adelaide.
Although Melbourne fits into that category, Zorko is confident the Lions can give the Demons a scare.
"It's going to be important for us to play to our strengths, but we have to win the contested ball first to give our outside runners an opportunity to move the ball," he said.
"We need to play our game. We need to get that balance right between offence and defence.
"Hopefully we can give Melbourne a really good challenge, and for our sake, we'd love another win.
"We love the feeling at the moment wins create."
