It is going on 26 years since the Brisbane Lions were formed via the merger of the Brisbane Bears and Fitzroy. A Club built on change that has seen many pivotal moments since. This year the Brisbane Lions and youi are teaming up for the ‘Moments Of Change’ series where each week they’ll look back at some of the defining moments that shaped them as the Club they are today.

Round 22 1998. Brisbane Lions hosted St. Kilda at the Gabba in the last game of the year. It loomed as a merciful end to a nightmare which inexplicably found a way for a win to make things worse. But it was also the beginning of a golden era.

The Lions were already assured of the wooden-spoon. With a 4-1-16 record they were two and a half games behind Hawthorn, Collingwood and Fremantle at the bottom of a 16-team ladder. St. Kilda were fourth at 13-8 and playing for a home final.

It had been a year in which Lions co-captain and Brownlow Medallist Michael Voss had suffered a badly broken leg in Perth in Round 11. Coach John Northey was sacked three days later, with assistant-coach Roger Merrett taking the reins in an environment of angst and instability on and off the field.

There was only one way it could get worse … if the Lions beat the Saints in Round 22 in what was the last game for ex-Geelong captain and adopted Brisbane favourite Andrew Bews. Because that would take them behind the threshold under which they would receive an extra selection in the upcoming 1998 draft.

They already had pick #1 in the bank. A loss to St. Kilda would give them pick #2 as well.

So what happened? The Lions, 20 points down in the second quarter and 21 points up inside the last six minutes, survived a stirring Saints comeback to win 12-20 (92) to 13-13 (91).

They got home by a split second, with St. Kilda captain Stewart Loewe kicking a 2m ‘goal’ that wasn’t just after the siren. When the umpires ruled it did not count the Gabba erupted.

Bews was buried under a pile of teammates after the Loewe ‘no-goal’. Fittingly, he had been right on the spot when the ball was thrown in beside the St.Kilda goal with four seconds on the clock, and Tony Brown had scrambled the ball to Loewe for the last-gasp chance.

“If it was my first game and not my last game I might have got across to cut that one off,” Bews told the throng of post-game media. “I looked at the umpire and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be chucking a dagger at him or blowing a kiss. As soon as those lunatics started jumping on me I knew we’d won. That was all I’d asked for. Whether it was one point or 10 goals I didn’t care.”

Watching it all unfold from the Channel 7 commentary box was Leigh Matthews. Unbeknown to the football world, that he’d already committed to coach the Lions in 1999.

The legendary Matthews had been identified as the man to rebuild the club but the media, believing he was not interested, focussed instead on the likes of Gerard Healy, Garry Lyon, Dermott Brereton and Tim Watson, who were all regarded at the time as coaches in waiting.

But as it turned out Matthews was the only person interviewed for the job. He stood out like a beacon to the people making the decision. It was just a matter of convincing him to forgo life in the football media and take over a team which had finished last amid massive off-field turmoil.

Matthews, a 332-game champion at Hawthorn from 1969-85 and 10-year premiership coach at Collingwood from 1986-95, had spent three years in the media. He wrote for the Herald Sun, was an analyst for radio station Triple M and was an expert commentator with Channel Seven. So good was he behind the microphone that Seven were about to negotiate a new deal that would have seen him included in the network’s 2000 Olympic coverage.

The Fremantle Dockers had approached Matthews a month earlier as a possible replacement for Gerard Neesham, who had coached the club in its first four years in the AFL. They’d finished 13^th-13^th-12^th-15^th under Neesham and realised they need a change. But Matthews wasn’t interested.

Brisbane? There was a spark. At least strong enough for him to agree to meet with the club.

The Lions’ first point of contact with Matthews was long-serving AFL solicitor Jeff Browne, a close friend of Lions CEO Andrew Ireland and Matthews himself, and the man who only three months ago was appointed president at Collingwood.

Browne arranged a meeting on Friday 21 August 1998, the day before the Lions’ Round 21 clash with Richmond in Melbourne that would seal the club’s 1998 wooden-spoon. It was held in the Board Room of Browne & Co Solicitors on the 6^th floor of 99 Queen Street. Browne welcomed Matthews plus the Lions contingent of Ireland, Chairman Alan Piper and Deputy Chairman Graeme Downie, and left them alone. It was the Lions’ party. He had no further role to play.

They had what Ireland later described as a “really good discussion” for about 90 minutes. Nobody was expecting a commitment or answer on the spot, but as the meeting drew to a close Piper asked for an initial indication from Matthews on his interest in the job. He told them he was a 90% no. Piper and Downie left, but Ireland went down in the lift with Matthews and they stood talking for a further 15 minutes on the footpath. For somebody Ireland thought would have been keen to keep the matter private Matthews was suddenly very public.

Ireland recalled the conversation as if it was yesterday. “Leigh was indicating that he was torn between a comfortable life in the media and wanting to coach again. He was 46 and said that if he didn’t return to coaching then he probably never would. He’d never lived outside Melbourne but had holidayed regularly in Queensland so it wasn’t quite the foreign territory it could have been.

As Matthews walked away Ireland felt that perhaps the man who ended Collingwood’s 32-year premiership drought wasn’t totally fulfilled by his media role and was more interested in the Brisbane job than he had initially let on. He rang Piper and Downie, updating then of the latest developments, and then called Browne. Browne, later to take charge of Channel 9, also thought there was a chance, and forecast Matthews’ next move. He would go to his long-time offsider and close friend Graeme “Gubby” Allan, who had been Football Manager during the Matthews’ reign at Collingwood. And he did.

Matthews rang Allan on the Sunday evening after doing commentary on the Collingwood-North Melbourne game at the MCG. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Why?” said Allan, who was planning to go out for a pizza near home at Warrandyte. “I’ve got something I’d like to discuss with you,” said Matthews.

Allan, sensing it was important, met Matthews for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Doncaster. There Matthews told his long-time ally of the Brisbane offer. Allan, a 141-game Fitzroy and Collingwood player from 1975-86 and a key member of the Collingwood administration from 1986-98, was positive. But he couldn’t determine Matthews’ mood. “I said to him he’d done virtually everything he ever wanted to do as a player and was regarded as the best player of all-time but he hadn’t got the coaching recognition he deserved. He was a great coach and he’d taken Collingwood to their first premiership in 32 years, which was quite a feat, but when people spoke about the great coaches they spoke of Sheedy, Pagan and Parkin, but not Matthews. This was his chance. I encouraged him to go,” Allan said years later.

The Lions group went to see AFL CEO Wayne Jackson. They explained where they were at and identified some financial considerations. After all, the salary for the position of coach was about to double. And it wasn’t just the coach. Under the proposed Matthews’ formula there would be significant increases in other football expenditure. Notably, more coaches and an up-sized medical operation.

Jackson replied that the League wasn’t in the business of under-writing coaching contracts and could not assist. But the CEO was totally supportive of the push for Matthews and encouraged the club to continue down that path. And he indicated that, with the continuing redevelopment of the Gabba, the AFL may be in a position to offer funding assistance in other areas.

Graeme Downie, later to enjoy the fruits of Matthews’ work as Chairman through the golden years, remembers the meeting vividly. “When we told Wayne we didn’t think we could afford Leigh he said to us “can you afford to stay on the bottom of the ladder?” It was exactly the right answer. We couldn’t afford Leigh but we couldn’t afford not to go with him too. We had to make an aggressive business decision and back Leigh to deliver a competitive team that would off-set the extra financial outlay. We couldn’t afford to take second best.”

There was further communication between the Lions and Matthews via telephone. Matthews and Allan met a couple of times. “Once I remember we were in a tea house in the Botanical Gardens off Toorak Road. It was halfway between his home at Brighton and Collingwood, where I was working. Leigh’s phone rang. It was Wayne Jackson. There’s no doubt the AFL was keen for him to go to Brisbane,” Allan recalled. The pressure was mounting. It was all happening very quickly, but he believed the stars were starting to align.

In fact, Matthews later revealed in his own mind he’d made his decision the day after the first meeting with the Lions on 22 August. It was at the 50^th birthday party of long-time media colleague Drew Morphett at La Bruschetta Restaurant, Malvern. The pair were working for Channel Seven together at the time and many years earlier had shared the ABC Footy Show panel with Ron Barassi and Doug Heywood

“When I finished coaching the first time I thought I’d have a year off. One year led to two and once it got into a third year I thought my coaching life had come and gone. Really, I was only doing the courtesy thing when I talked to the Brisbane people. But I remember thinking at the Drew Morphett’s birthday party I could feel myself sliding down a well. I’m not sure why but all of a sudden I started to want to do it again,” he said.

The next time the would-be saviour met the Lions hierarchy in person was Saturday afternoon 28 August. Just seven days after their initial meeting. It was the afternoon of the Round 22 night game against St.Kilda. Matthews flew into Brisbane and met Ireland and Piper at Piper’s Dockside apartment, adjacent to the official AFL hotel in Brisbane. There and then he gave them a commitment to take the job.

Of course he said nothing in the commentary box as the Lions posted the win they really didn’t need. There was still a contract to resolve and details to fine-tune, but he knew he was watching his team.

According to Ireland, Matthews had stipulated three conditions during negotiations. One, that he would oversee the football operation. Two, that Allan was appointed Football Manager. And three, that the club make a significant financial investment in the football operation. That they increase significantly the expenditure on coaching, the medical operation, facilities and support staff to ensure that there would be no excuses for the players. He wouldn’t come unless all three were agreed. There was no hesitation. It was done.

A three-year contracted negotiated by Matthews’ long-time manager Frank Buckle was announced when he fronted the Brisbane media on 7 September 1998. He was honest and forthright, interesting and awe-inspiring. And encouraging.

“I guess the Brisbane situation appealed to me for a whole lot of reasons. Partly just coaching the football team, but partly to do with Australian rules in what has traditionally been a non-Australian rules area. I don’t think I would have coached another Melbourne club, but the total package of it all eventually ticked me over,” he told them.

The decision-making process? “I had to decide whether I wanted to do it again. I coached for 10 years. I’ve done it. I know all the good and bad. I’ve led a pretty comfortable, well-paid lifestyle lately. I’ve enjoyed that so it was a big decision and it wasn’t one I was going to make overnight,” he answered.

Later, he explained further that the thing which had always engrossed him about football was the roller-coaster ride. “Your emotions are on the line. We all know it’s make-believe - it’s not fair-dinkum war - but on the day it’s like you and the opposition are warring together. You have this emotional surge if you win and a real emotional downer if you lose. The extremities of those emotions have been there most of my life and I didn’t quite get that in the media. I always wanted to do the media as well as I could but I didn’t get the same urges of adrenalin rush without the club involvement,” he said.

Living in Brisbane? “I’ve lived my entire life in Victoria so it was a big decision, but working with (Channel) Seven you fly around Australia and get the full concept of the national competition. Australian rules has been my thing for my entire life. I love the fact that the game is now played at its highest level in every capital city in Australia – minus Hobart.”

Key issues? “The Lions do have potential – they have played in the finals for the three previous years (before 1998) so obviously the team has talent - but that wasn’t part of my decision. I was more concerned that the Board and myself were thinking the same way about what we want this football club to be, what resources they’re prepared to put into our staffing, all the things that help the players play well.”

Off-field problems of 1998? “People involved in football clubs are all basically the same. It’s a matter of everyone knowing what their job is, what their task is, and everyone working together. Everyone within the organisation has to think that way. I guess from afar one would ask the question ‘did that happen (this year)?’

Immediately after the packed media conference Matthews met the players collectively for the first time. They were about to head off on holidays so it just a few basic principles and comments.

For each of the players it was an important time. Their new boss had arrived. But for Chris Scott, the standout Lions player of 1998 and now the Geelong coach, it was much more. He was “very nervous”. He was about to meet his boyhood hero. “His aura was incredible and he came across as a very impressive presenter who was supremely confident in his message. He didn’t make any sweeping statements, which was the way to go. But he left with everyone thinking it was a fresh start. Reputations or past actions weren’t going to mean anything. He’d make up his own mind and that was just what we needed,” Scott said later.

“But I don’t think anyone realised then the profound influence he was going to have on everyone associated with the club, and the club itself. He revolutionised the way football clubs structure their football operation. With the medical staff and the coaching staff, he provided everything the players could possibly need. Clubs expect a lot from players these days – and rightly so – but under Leigh the club was giving the players every possible opportunity and resource to be successful.”

Seven weeks later, at the National Draft, the Lions used pick #1 to take West Australian Des Headland, who would go on to play in the 2002 premiership before heading home to Perth and join the Fremantle Dockers.

And pick #2 in the draft which could have been Brisbane’s too? It became Justin Longmuir, a 139-game Fremantle player from 1999-2007 and now in his third season as Dockers senior coach.

Thanks to our friends at Youi for helping bring this to life.