Statistically Lachie Neale had a 2019 season with the Brisbane Lions like no other. And although it didn’t end as he would have liked it left his name printed indelibly in the club record books after a monster Sunday afternoon at the MCG.

It was a bitter/sweet Round 23 clash at the MCG, when the top-of-the-ladder Lions travelled south needing a win over the fourth-placed Richmond to secure the AFL minor premiership.

And it is the headline story in a combined ‘Remember When - Round 23-24’ flashback this week.

Brisbane were coming off a heart-stopping one-point round 22 Gabba win over Geelong in which Lincoln McCarthy kicked the last-minute winner against his former side to see the Lions displace the Cats from the top of the ladder.

It was Brisbane (64 points) from Geelong, West Coast and Richmond (60), with Geelong to finish a thrilling home-and-away campaign against lowly Carlton and West Coast hosting a Hawthorn side fighting desperately for the last spot in the finals on top of the Lions v Tigers blockbuster.

It wasn’t a good day for Chris Fagan’s men. They trailed by 25 points at quarter-time and after pulling to within seven points midway through the third quarter conceded the next four goals and lost by 27 points.

It meant Geelong, Brisbane and Richmond finished with 64 points, a game clear of Collingwood and West Coast, after the Cats cruised home against Carlton and Hawthorn upset West Coast but missed the finals.

The Lions had to be content with second spot, which meant a home final against Richmond in the first week of September, and then a home final against GWS.

Lions fans won’t remember fondly the club’s 0-3 end to a season which had stood at 16-5, but they will remember Neale’s extraordinary performance of Round 23.

Since the introduction statistics possessions in 1965 the then 26-year-old in his 22^nd game in Brisbane colors had 51 possessions to surpass the club record of 48 set by Tom Rockliff in 2016.

It was just the 10^th time an AFL player had posted a half-century and saw him join a list of players headed by Collingwood pair Barry Price and John Greening, who had 52 and 50 respectively three weeks apart at Victoria Park in 1971.

Greg Williams, then playing with Sydney, was next with an astonishing 53 possessions and six goals at the SCG in 1989, before Collingwood captain Tony Shaw had an even 50 possessions against the Brisbane Bears at Victoria Park in 1991 – and went without a vote in the Brownlow Medal.

It was 20 years before the next 50-possession game when Adelaide’s Scott Thompson had 51 at Carrara in 2011, which was followed in 2012 by a then equal record 53 by Gold Coast’s Gary Ablett in a 97-point loss at the MCG.

Tom Mitchell had 50 and then a record 54 at the MCG in 2017 and 2018, before Neale put together a stunning statistical haul of 51 possessions (25 contested), six tackles and 14 clearances in this week three years ago.

This saw the prized off-season recruit finish the home-and-away season with 688 possessions to obliterate the 612 of Dayne Beams in 2018. He’d topped 30 possessions in a game 11 times, three 40-possession games on top of his 51.

Neale’s 51 possessions, made up of 19 kicks and an equal club-record 32handballs, was a rare Brisbane highlight in a combined Round 23-24 club history.

It is a history of just 16 games – two each in 1991-92 and 2011, and one in 1994 and every year since 2012 except the 17-game Covid season of 2020 – and sees the club with a disappointing 4-12 record overall – 4-5 at home and 0-7 away. But there were some memorable moments, including:-

1992 – End of an Era

Round 23 1992 signalled the end of an era in Queensland football when the Brisbane Bears played their 61^st and last game at Carrara, the one-time farming plot on which original club owner Christopher Skase built what is now Metricon Stadium.

It had been universally condemned as the wrong place for a team with the name of the State capital, but for six years under the Skase/Paul Cronin regime and later Reuben Pelerman it was home.

The club had posted a one-in-three win record at the ground, where David Bain posted a club possession record of 40 against Hawthorn in 1990, and three players shared the club goal-kicking record at eight – Warwick Capper (1988), Roger Merrett (1990) and John Hutton (1992).

Hutton kicked eight at Carrara twice – in a 164-point loss to Geelong in Round 7 of his only season at the club, and in the Carrara farewell, when the Bears beat the Sydney Swans 19-15 (129) to 9-16 (70) to close out a 21-1-39 win/loss record at the ground.

It was battle for the wooden-spoon, with each of northern clubs having had three wins and a draw in 20 games. But the Swans’ vastly superior percentage mean the Bears had to win to avoid the ‘spoon’. And they did it easily.

By halftime the home side led 9-10 to 1-6 and at three-quarter time, when the scoreboard showed 15-11 to 3-11, a 100-point margin was on the cards. Only a six-goal Swans final quarter avoided that but the 19-15 (129) to 9-16 (70) was hardly flattering.

Fittingly, Matthew Campbell, the only Bears player to play in the first and last game at Carrara, was best afield with 32 possessions and a goal for three Brownlow Medal votes.

Hutton’s eight goals in what was to be the penultimate Bears game for the former #1 draft pick from Perth earned him two votes, while Danny Noonan took one vote for his 34 possessions in a side which included a 17-year-old Michael Voss playing just his fifth game.

For the record books, the Bears’ biggest win and highest score at Carrara came on the same day in 1989, when they belted North Melbourne 25-17 (167) to 12-12 (84). Merrett kicked seven goals and Brad Hardie five in what was the 250^th AFL game for Geoff Raines and Rodney Eade.

2015 – A Fitting Farewell for Jed

Jed Adcock ended his Brisbane playing career in a fashion befitting a former club captain in Round 23 2015 when he helped pilot a huge upset win to see the club avoid the wooden-spoon.

The Lions, playing the sixth-placed Western Bulldogs at the Gabba, went into the final round at the bottom of the ladder at 3-18 a game and 0.3% behind 17^th-placed Carlton.

It was a rollercoaster-plus on a hot Sunday afternoon. The Dogs kicked six goals in a row to lead 8-0 to 2-5 at quarter-time before the Lions kicked six in a row of their own to hit the front on a Dan McStay major. But still conceded the next three and trailed 8-12 to 11-2 at halftime.

When Adcock finished off the good lead-up work of Allen Christensen and then Pearce Hanley hit the mark with a check-side snap it was Brisbane by three. The Dogs kicked the next two before the Lions answered again through Adcock, Josh Green, Hanley and McStay. The home side was 15 points up at the last change.

But, almost as if it was part of the script, the visitors kicked the first three goals of the final term. Dogs by three. Lewis Taylor snapped brilliantly over his head from a goalmouth pack to take back the lead before Green rover brilliantly for another. Lions by nine.

It went Dogs-Lions-Dogs-Dogs and 22 minutes into the final term the home side were five down.

Fittingly, Adcock, who had made his intentions clear before the game, kicked his 59^th and last Brisbane goal – and one of his best – to turn things around again. Streaming through the middle of the ground, he took three bounces and let fly from just outside 50m. A major all the way.

When Mitch Robinson picked out an unattended McStay for him to feed Green running solo into an open goal it was all over. The Lions won 19-16 (130) to 19-8 (122).

Adcock, now on the Lions coaching staff after playing one more season in AFL with the Dogs in 2016, finished with 21 possessions and four goals in a standout performance in his 206^th game.

Oddly, he missed the votes which went to Hanley (35 possessions, two goals), Stefan Martin (32 possessions and 50 hit-outs) and Tom Rockliff (39 possessions).

But the good news came soon after when Carlton copped a hiding from Hawthorn at the MCG, allowing Brisbane to sneak off the bottom by a meagre 2.7%.

2016 – A Double Ton – Just

Not everything always go perfectly to plan, and it certainly didn’t in Round 23 2016, when Daniel Merrett played his 200^th and last game for the Lions in a 58-point Gabba loss to St.Kilda.

But at least the ever-popular fullback known as ‘Sauce’ got there. Just.

Merrett, now a member of the Lions commercial team, had started the season needing 22 games to reach 200. He went injury-free through his 12^th season but was hit by illness not once and not twice but three times.

He was a late withdrawal in Round 1 and Round 7, and was so unwell in Round 17 he wasn’t even chosen. So he’d used each of his ‘lives’. He needed to play the last six. And he did.

It was an especially memorable day, as the Saints won 25-11 (161) to 15-13 (103), but it did give Merrett some material for a story he’s told time and again. “My last game? I remember it well – Nick Riewoldt kicked nine on me.”

And so he did, but the Lions avoided the wooden-spoon by the narrowest of margins. Having gone into the final round a game and 2.9% clear of a patched up Essendon side in the year of their supplements saga, Brisbane held 17^th position by 0.6% after Essendon had surprised Carlton by 24 points the day before.