- Brisbane Lions stars have hit the ground running
- In pre-season block ahead of Christmas break
- Gunning for another AFL premiership in 2025
Veteran Brisbane defender Ryan Lester has declared the Lions will relish the challenge of being the team everyone wants to beat when they chase back to back AFL flags in 2025.
Lester, 32, won a premiership this year, and it was reward for patience after making his debut in 2011.
Chris Fagan’s men celebrated accordingly after the club’s first grand final win since 2003, but pre-season training has been anything but complacent.
‘It’s a long season, and we’re still two or three months away, but we’ve got to do the right things now and create the right habits now,’ Lester said on Wednesday.
‘[Just] because we got the result this year, it’s not about taking shortcuts and lapping up the pats on the back that you get.
‘It’s about continually doing the right things, and with the culture that we’ve built here, and that’s taken a long time to build, we want to maintain that.
Brisbane Lions defender Ryan Lester has declared his team will relish the challenge when it comes to chasing back to back AFL flags in 2025
Lester, 32, won a premiership this year, and it was reward for patience after making his debut in 2011 and over 200 appearances for the Lions
‘We are very lucky with the environment we’ve got, so we’ve got to keep buying into it, and that’s what we’ve been doing.
‘We are just really excited for what’s to come in 2025.’
Collectively, a top-four spot is what the playing group are striving for next season.
They fell short of that goal in 2024, with a fifth-place finish on the AFL ladder meaning they had to walk the sudden-death tightrope for the entire four-week finals series.
‘I feel really driven just to finish top four, and that’s the feeling that I get among all boys,’ Lester added.
‘We have always strived to earn respect from the competition, and we have slowly done that.
‘Now we want to be a team that’s up there challenging again and again.’
If the Lions are to win consecutive premierships, it will be without star forward Joe Daniher, who retired following Brisbane’s 60-point grand-final thrashing of Sydney in September at the MCG.
To help fill the void left by Daniher, the Lions have recruited key forward Sam Day, who after 14 seasons and 155 senior games with the Gold Coast Suns, was released.
‘Obviously big Joe’s moved on. I’ll have to thank him if I can find him, I think he’s gone off-grid,’ Day said on the club’s official website.
‘Replace is an interesting word. I don’t know if we can ever replace Joe. ‘He was a pretty special athlete and much loved around the club.
‘I never knew him personally, but just the way the guys talk about him, he was such a special guy for them.
‘I’m just looking forward to being my own player. Hopefully, I can come in and make the rest of the guys around me better.’