The Brisbane Lions hosted a Members Forum in Brisbane on Thursday 11 September, after holding a similar event in Melbourne earlier in the year.

A strong showing of more than 120 members turned up to the Gabba and took advantage of the opportunity to direct questions to key Club figures including new CEO Greg Swann, Senior Coach Justin Leppitsch, and  General Manager of Football Operations, Dean Warren.

The event was designed to provide members with a platform to raise any questions to senior personnel at the Club, with no subject being ‘off limits’.

Overall the forum generated wonderful discussion and feedback, so much so that the Lions are already planning on hosting the events again next year in both Melbourne and Brisbane.

For those who were unable to attend, please find below a brief snapshot of some of the questions and responses from the evening.

CEO Greg Swann addressed the members at the beginning of the forum with responses to two popular topics of discussion…

Greg Swann: I’ll head two things off at the pass – one is the lion.

(The concept of using a real lion at home games) did create a big furore in the end.

With a large part of our upcoming membership campaign being based around the ‘old’ lion being back, we wondered if it would be possible to get a real lion.

I raised it in a staff meeting about a month ago, and everyone was sort of laughing and a bit jocular, but it was just one of those things.

My new mantra, if you like, is that we need to try new things, be out there, and we need to be aggressive. We can’t be doing the same thing, because it hasn’t worked. That was part of how this all started.

We knew there would be a lot of issues, and we hadn’t spoken to anyone about it, so it was always going to be more unlikely than likely. But it was part of us trying to think of new things, trying to be different, and trying to get some publicity.

The other question will no doubt be about the training and admin facility.

There are four of us that weren’t involved in the original decision – (Board members) Andrew Wellington, Sarah Kelly, Leigh Matthews, and myself – that have formed a group to look at all options.

It’s been 18 months since the original decision was made, so things have changed. There might have been things that were looked at back then that weren’t a possibility, but now are. There are a whole lot of things that we’ve been doing.

We’ve held a series of meetings with councils, governments, and private enterprises. The process is ongoing, so I can’t stand here and say that it looks like we’re going to ‘X’ or ‘Y’ because we’re still only early into that phase.

As we get closer to making that decision, we’re going to bring everyone along with us so that there are no surprises.

That’s under way and we’re looking at every possibility. We’ll come back with what’s the best decision for the Club.

Can you please explain your view on targeting marquee players to join the Club?

Greg Swann: We want to be aggressive, there’s no doubt about that.

There are always 17 other clubs competing for people, and that’s a battle.

I’m a big believer that what we’ve got to offer here (in Brisbane) is different to what’s available in Melbourne or anywhere else. I don’t see that as a negative, I see that as a positive.

The weather is incredible. It’s a great lifestyle; it’s an absolutely fantastic lifestyle. And you are out of the fishbowl, which is sometimes an attraction.

There are three mina reasons why people move clubs – they’re either unhappy, it’s a lifestyle decision, or they see success.

While we’ve been relatively poor in the past few years, now that we’ve turned and finished the season off with a lot of promise, that also helps attract people.

We’re in the market and are hopeful that we’ll pick some people up, but there’s a long way to go. Having been around for the past 15 years as a CEO, I know that until they’ve signed the contract and are running down the race in your jumper, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong.

Have you determined a philosophy to bring the Club back together and move forward as one?

Greg Swann: You simply can’t function as an AFL club if you got bits of the club that aren’t together.

There’s no question that from the players, to the administration, to the Board, to the members, to the corporate partners, and the sponsors – the whole package – everybody’s in it together.

The vision has to be clear and everyone has to buy into it.

We’re in that process, and it’s the only way we’re going to succeed. It’s something that we’re pushing really hard internally.

We want to be the best. When I got appointed, I mentioned that when I used to come up here with Collingwood, we’d get belted and the crowd would be roaring, the place would be full and Brisbane had that ‘swagger’ about them.

We want to get the ‘swagger’ back. It doesn’t happen overnight, but that’s what we’re going to try and do.

I’m interested to know what attracted you to the CEO position here at the Brisbane Lions, and what you want to achieve in your time here.

Greg Swann: One of the things I really enjoyed about my two previous roles (at Collingwood then Carlton) was that I went there when they were on the bottom of the ladder and losing money.

I like the rebuild, and as this is the third time, I like to think I know what you’ve got to do.

The main thing is you need to get good people at the footy club, and I think we’ve got good people at the footy club.

I’ve been back to the AFL and they’ve asked me what my initial thoughts are on the Club. I said we’ve got good people, but what we haven’t got is any money to invest into the business and into the people. We’ve saved ourselves to death in a way. We’ve cut costs.

As an example, there’s a soft salary cap, which on average is around $9.4 million and we’ve budgeted to spend $7.3 million – so we’re a long way behind the average spend in the competition.

That represents challenges in itself, but we need to be smarter with the resources we’ve got.

In the meantime, we need to stem the bleeding from a financial point of view, and win games of footy. That’s what we’re here for.

I said it (at the Club Champion Dinner), but re-building is actually the wrong word. We’re actually building a footy club.

The end of the season was really encouraging, but that’s not where it stops, we need to continue to get better.

Fans are constantly faced with rumour and innuendo about player movements in the papers, and it can be a bit disconcerting. How does the Club manage these things when they arise?

Justin Leppitsch: It’s not ideal when those things get in the newspaper.

With this time of the year, we’re out earlier than some teams, so our time between now and the trade period is longer than others, which means it’s longer for the 800-odd journalists to write a story about us and what we’re doing next.

These things are common, that’s what happens. We have to deal with those conversations internally. We can’t control the media unfortunately.

We don’t like the scuttlebutt either. The Daniel Merrett one, that was difficult. I’d just had his exit meeting about eight hours earlier, and then I picked up the paper the next day. It was news to me as well.

We can only deal with the facts in the end. There are none of our players walking out to other clubs, which is a good sign. But unfortunately when players are linked to your club, players are linked out of it as well.

I’ve got no intention of ripping the guts out of our list, but we are mindful that we have to add to our list.

As you know, we’ve had four retirements and we’re going to replace them with four kids at this point in time. That means our list will become even younger than it was this year. That’s the reality unless we can attract mature talent to our football club.

But if they’re ‘B’ Grade or ‘C’ graders there’s no point, we might as well stick with our kids. We’ve said publicly that we want to recruit ‘A’ Grade talent.

From a coach’s point of view, what do you think is the biggest challenge for the Club next year?

Justin Leppitsch: My biggest challenge is always keeping the players motivated to learn.

Implementing our curriculum and implementing our game style is almost the easy part now. It’s about getting them to do it – not telling them.

There are certain things you can’t avoid, and age/list analysis is one of those.

Anyone that has an 18-year-old boy knows that they’re not generally consistent by nature. So you’re dealing with 5-6 on the footy field at the one time, you’re going to get inconsistencies within performances. You can accept it a little bit from the younger ones.

Any process we can go through to get our list a bit more mature quicker, we’d take. But not at the expense of quality, that’s for sure.

Are you happy with the facilities and resources that have been put in place to help you retain young players? Are you happy with support Club has given you?

Justin Leppitsch: The short answer is yes.

I think I take great responsibility for all of that. I set the culture, the environment, and the general mood of the place. I think I need to take the biggest responsibility – more than the welfare people – of the happiness of our players.

They need to know we’ve picked them for a reason and where they fit into our planning, and how we’re going to support them to do that.

If anyone feels loved in their environment, they won’t want to leave irrespective of whether they’ve left home or not.

If we don’t provide them the right lifestyle, the right facilitates, and the right care, they’ll go back to what they knew was better than what they’re currently doing.

What’s the story with Browny? Is he going to remain at the Club next year in some capacity?

Justin Leppitsch: Yep, Browny’s going to be working part-time.

He’s going to do some work in the media, but also give (his wife) Kylie some time. He doesn’t want to work full-time, so he’s going to be working with our young key forwards – two times a week in the pre-season, and one in-season – just with their technique.

That’s all he wants from a football perspective, but I’m sure the Club will have him doing some other things off the field as well.