Life’s all about change, and Youi’s the insurer for all the changes – big and small – that happen to you. That’s why the Brisbane Lions and Youi have teamed-up for the ‘Moments of Change’ series, where each week they’ll look back at some of the defining moments that have shaped the club you know today.

One of the popular buzz terms in the AFL in recent years has been ‘destination club’. It is a powerful endorsement used to identify a club preferred by players seeking a fresh start to their AFL career. A massive tick.

That the Brisbane Lions are now regarded as a destination club is one of the over-riding positives of the past six years for the club under first Bob Sharpless and now Andrew Wellington, Greg Swann and Chris Fagan. And all who make it work.

It is a cumulative tick for one recurring moment of change after another. A period of change. Because it is not something that happens quickly. It takes a prolonged whole-of-club focus to win the level of endorsement that comes with the ‘destination club’ tag.

And it takes something pretty special to lure recruits of the calibre of Luke Hodge and Charlie Cameron (2018), Lachie Neale, Lincoln McCarthy, Jarryd Lyons and Marcus Adams (2019), Callum AhChee, Grant Birchall and Cam Ellis-Yolmen (2020), Joe Daniher and Nakia Cockatoo (2021) and Darcy Fort (2022).

Statistically, over the last five years under List Manager Dom Ambrogio the Lions rank #1 for games played by players signed as free agents or secured via trade from opposition clubs. Imports.

The ‘Dynamic Dozen’ listed above have played a total of 618 games in that time. Next best for games by imports are Carlton (503), Essendon (456), Fremantle (447) and Port Adelaide (425), Western Bulldogs (413) and St.Kilda (400).

Brisbane’s import tally of 12 ranks #6 behind Carlton (17), Gold Coast (14), St.Kilda (14), North Melbourne (13) and Port Adelaide (13), with Richmond at the bottom of both lists, having secured just two imports for a total of 97 games.  

What makes a destination club? It is different things to different players at different stages of their career, and like a cake, it takes all ingredients to complete the recipe.

Club culture and welfare are paramount. Likewise, a coach who makes a player feel wanted and offers opportunity for improved performance and success – individually and collectively.

An elite medical program is paramount but even the Queensland climate can play a part. In the depth of winter it’s much more pleasant.

To some, too, the relative anonymity of AFL players Brisbane is important because they can live pretty much a normal public life without daily intrusions. It’s not that the players are not often recognised, but it’s not all-consuming. Not overwhelming.

Part of the ‘normal public life’ consideration is the intense player scrutiny almost daily via social media in the southern states. “It’s a real thing these days. The speculation and pressure is intense, and it’s not for everyone,” Ambrogio confirmed.

All this is about providing the best possible environment for all talent recruited via the draft system or hand-picked from other clubs. To maximise their development as players on the field and help ensure, too, that whenever it comes time to leave the club they do so well-equipped for the challenges ahead because of the hard work and learnings done off-field.

Significantly, before Ambrogio joined the Lions in February 2017 the club had put three key pieces of the puzzle in place in November 2016 in player welfare, medical services and player development.

Andrew Crowell, who played 44 AFL games with the Adelaide Crows from 2000-03, was lured from the AFL Players’ Association, where he been a regional manager responsible for player development and engagement at Adelaide, Port Adelaide, West Coast, Fremantle and Essendon.

He was appointed Head of Welfare and Wellbeing two months to the day after former Adelaide football boss David Noble had accepted the same role with the Lions, and now heads a well-resourced and varied welfare team.

Peter Blanch, who had worked previously at the Australian Academy of Sport, Cricket Australia, Swimming Australia and Essendon AFL club, was appointed Head of Medical Services to overseeing an experienced team of medical experts.

And Scott Borlace, a one-time Port Adelaide rookie and Norwood (SANFL) assistant-coach, stepped up from a four-year stint as Lions Academy and Development Coach to become Head of Development and responsible for the co-ordination of the development team.

This trio came 12 months after the appointment of High Performance Manager Damien Austin, who brought to the Lions’ conditioning and high-performance team vast experience at the Sydney Swans plus the NSW Swifts (netball), the Sydney Roosters (NRL) and the Queensland Reds (rugby).

“When you are trying to sell the club to potential recruits or draftees you’ve got to really believe what you are saying so by investing heavily in each of these areas we could do so in the knowledge that we could back up our promises,” said Ambrogio.

“Fages (coach Chris Fagan) is the other big part of the package because he’s had such a long career living the standards we aspire to and is so well regarded across the football industry not just as a coach but as a person. He exudes honesty.”

Yet ironically the player at the top of the ‘Dynamic Dozen’ was not lured by any of these factors. It was not about what the Lions could do for Hodge, but what Hodge could do for the Lions. And it came with a big ‘please’ from a man with whom he had shared so much.

Hodge had retired. After 305 games from 2002-17, from age 17 to 33, almost half his life, he’d called time on an unbelievable career. Four premierships – three as captain – and two Norm Smith Medals on top of a host of club awards. An AFL Hall of Famer in waiting.

He’d shared the journey at Hawthorn with Fagan, a key man under coach Alastair Clarkson as head of coaching and development (2008-2013) and general manager of football (2013-16).

And as Hodge has explained, a series of text messages from Fagan after 12 months as Brisbane coach sparked an unlikely comeback as basically a playing coach. An on-field leader and mentor.

"The more I spoke with Fages the more intrigued I became," Hodge explained at the time. "I used to think, ‘Look at Clarko, you’ve got to be crazy to be a coach’. But I had started to enjoy teaching and helping to develop the young players. That’s when Fages said: ‘You reckon you’ve got a little bit of football left?’

"He explained how the Lions had an exciting group of young defenders who would develop a lot faster with an older head to guide them ... it’s invaluable the feedback someone like me could offer them out on the ground during the game."

Hodge was reluctant to do the same at Hawthorn, knowing the club had defenders returning from injury and that he would likely be keeping a good, young player out of the side.

"Playing with Brisbane is not about being best-on-ground or getting a heap of the ball, it is all about developing these kids to be the best players they can be as soon as possible," he wrote.

"I’d enjoyed a similar role with Hawthorn this season (2017), which had helped fuel my interest in the teaching side of the game and obviously, by extension, coaching."

Now settled with his family in Brisbane and still doing some part-time coaching at the Lions while travelling interstate most weeks to follow a blossoming media career, Hodge was magnificent for two years and 41 games in the #2 Lions jumper. Just ask the younger players. They hung on his every word. And still do.

In the same summer as Hodge headed north the Lions targeted the hottest small forward in the competition. A player born in Mt.Isa who went to school in Brisbane and had spent time in the Lions Academy before moving with his family to Newman in the Pilbara regions of WA, about 1200km north of Perth.

After 73 games and 87 goals with Adelaide from 2014-17 Charlie Cameron was recruiting target #1.

It was an audacious bid by a club that had finished at the bottom of the 2017 home-and-away ladder to secure a player who had enjoyed a key role with the side that finished top of the 2017 home-and-away season and subsequently lost the grand final to Richmond.

Cameron’s close relationship with Noble during their shared time at the Crows was important, and after a stand-off at the trade table the Lions eventually secured the 23-year-old excitement machine via a trade for pick #12 in the 2017 AFL draft, which subsequently became Crows forward Darcy Fogarty. Now 99 games and 207 goals later it was a value-plus investment.

In 2018 the Lions replicated the 5-17 record of 2017 but improved their percentage from 74.3% to 89.1% and moved three spots up the ladder to 15th. They’d shown good signs on the field and had started to win the respect of the competition off the field. It was time for an all-out assault.

Ambrogio, by now 12 months in the job after long stints at the Gold Coast Suns and the Western Bulldogs as off-sider to ex-Fitzroy 180-gamer and Brisbane Recruiting and List Manager Scott Clayton become one very busy man.

One of the club’s prime early targets was McCarthy, a product of Bordertown in country SA who had originally been drafted by Geelong from SANFL club Glenelg with pick #66 in the 2011 National Draft.

The spring-heeled small forward had been plagued by injury and had played just 29 games in seven years. And although he was more than happy at the Cats and was offered a contract extension, McCarthy simply decided he needed a fresh start. The high regard in which the Lions medical and conditioning team was held across the competition was a key factor.  

It didn’t hurt the Lions, too, that McCarthy and Neale were close mates, having grown up not far apart on the SA side of the border with Victoria and played together with Glenelg in the SANFL. They were even drafted just eight picks apart, with Neale having gone to Fremantle at #58.

By chance, McCarthy and Neale had the same manager. And after one thing led to another soon enough the Lions had added the 135-game Fremantle midfielder, winner of the club B&F in 2016-18, to their target list.

The McCarthy trade was the first one lodged in the 2018 trade period on 8 October. Geelong, historically always reasonable to deal with, accepted a swap of picks in which the Lions gave up #43 and pick #62 in exchange for #55 and #59.

Neale? That was a different story. “At the outset we didn’t think we’d have any chance but slowly we chipped away and things started to fall into place,” Ambrogio recalled.

And while loath to detail the finer points of the Neale pitch, he confirmed that Neale, a country boy at heart, wasn’t overly enamoured with the fishbowl life of Perth, where everything revolves around the two AFL clubs. And, keen to go down the coaching track post-football, the prospect of playing under a mentoring coach like Fagan appealed to him.

But the Neale deal was never going to be easy. It dragged on into the last day of the trade period and was unresolved when the Lions landed Adams from the Western Bulldogs.

A West Australian originally drafted at #35 in the 2015 National Draft, Adams had played 27 games from 2016-18 but, like McCarthy, had endured more than his share of injury woes.

Adams’ only link to the Lions had been via Jed Adcock, former Brisbane captain who had finished his playing career alongside the powerful defender at the Dogs in 2016 and joined the Lions coaching panel in 2017. So the powerhouse Dogs defender just made a pure football decision and was traded in for pick #32 and a future third-round pick.

On the same day the Lions traded Dayne Beams, originally a Collingwood player who had spent 2015-18 years at the Gabba for 59 games, two years as captain and the 2015 Merrett/Murray Medal, back to Collingwood.

Having stepped down as skipper mid-season following the passing of his father, Beams had insisted all year he would see out his Brisbane contract before a big about-face saw him request a return to the Pies.

It was done when the Lions sent Beams, pick #41 and pick #44 for the Pies for pick #18 and pick #56, and Collingwood’s first-round pick in 2019. Eventually, the return package led the club to Ely Smith and Kai Lohmann.

The Neale deal was tough, but like the Adams and Beams deals, was closed on the last day of the trade period when the Lions gave up pick #6, #19 and #55 for Neale and pick #30.

Mid-season, too, Ambrogio had made another important signing on a manic trip to Ireland. Having been at the Gabba for the Round 5 Q-Clash, he caught a late flight out and landed in Dublin to meet James Madden, who had been identified via the AFL’s ever-growing talent program. And he left with the signature of the tearaway Gaelic footballer. More time in the air than he was on the ground, Ambrogio was back in Australia for the Round 6 clash with the GWS in Sydney.

In the same 12-month period the Lions also signed the multi-talented Tom Fullarton, a former Australian Under 17 basketball captain, as a Category B rookie like Madden.

So, the trade period was done, but the Lions weren’t finished yet. And having traded out two midfielder captains in two years with the exit of restricted free agent Tom Rockliff and Beams, the club looked to reinforce their midfield stocks.

Acting on football ‘intel’ which told them Gold Coast’s Jarryd Lyons was ‘gettable’, they went to work and engineered a deal whereby the Suns, keen to alleviate some salary cap pressure, delisted the contracted former Adelaide Crows player. The Lions, already with Lyons’ younger brother Corey on their list, signed the then delisted free agent, whose prime off-season focus at the time had been his wedding.

So in four big deals the Lions had picked up a South Australian playing in Western Australia (Neale), a South Australian playing in Victoria (McCarthy), a West Australian playing in Victoria (Adams) and a Victorian who had played in SA and on the Gold Coast (Lyons).

There was not a go-home consideration in any of them. Each was a straight-forward football decision. A key moment in club history because once and for all the ill-fated ‘go home five’ had been wiped from the slate and replaced by an enormously talented group of newcomers.

It was no coincidence, too, that Neale, Lyons, McCarthy and Adams were all born in the 1992-93 period – the same period from which the go-home five of Sam Docherty, Elliot Yeo, Jared Polec, Billy Longer and Patrick Karnezis came.

The close-knit recruiting and list management team had identified a specific gap in the age profile of the playing list and rectified it.

After 10 wins in Fagan’s first two years at the helm the Lions made a meteoric jump to finish equal top of the 2019 home-and-away ladder, behind Geelong on percentage, and were starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel before being eliminated from the finals in straight sets.

With Hodge having retired (again), Fagan turned to another Hawthorn veteran in Birchall in the 2019-20 off-season. The 248-game four-time premiership player originally from Tasmania, a teammate of Hodge for 12 years, joined the Lions as a free agent and added his experience to a still young defensive group. He played 39 games in 2020-21. Significantly, too, he is still at the club as a development coach and match day runner.

Ah Chee, a WA product originally drafted by Gold Coast at #8 in the 2015 draft, had played 45 games in four years with the Suns but only one in an injury-riddled 2019. Having seen Tom Lynch, Dion Prestia, Steven May and Jaeger O’Meara head a mass player exodus as the club went through a tough time, he too sought greener pastures up the highway and landed at the Gabba in exchange for a second and fourth round draft picks.

Ellis-Yolmen, a Taree-born SA product originally drafted by Adelaide at pick #64 in 2011, eight spots behind Neale and two spots ahead of McCarthy, was the third recruit of the 2019-20 off-season. He, too, had connections to Noble, having played 39 games with the Adelaide Crows from 2012-19, and had seduced Lions recruiters with a powerful 10-game burst in 2019 when averaged 23.5 possessions (12.3 contested possessions)

The Lions took the big-bodied midfielder as a delisted free agent but he played only nine games in four blocks in 2020 – Rounds 3-4-5, 9-10-11, 17-18 and the preliminary final, when he was recalled at the expense of Keidean Coleman against the powerhouse Richmond side.

That was the end of his journey. He was never fully fit in his time at the Gabba, and after choosing not to be vaccinated against Covid ahead of the 2021 season was placed on the inactive list and subsequently moved on.

Twelve months later, after another excellent home-and-away season turned into finals disappointment in 2020, the Lions recruiting team swung their attention towards Cockatoo.

Originally from the tiny town of Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory, and the nephew of Cairns junior turned Essendon and Port Adelaide star Che Cockatoo-Collins, he had been drafted by Geelong at pick #10 in the 2014 National Draft.

But the highly-rated midfielder, who had family in Brisbane, had gone through a horrid run with injury. He played 34 games from 2015-18 and none at all in 2019-20. The lure of a fresh start under a medical program with a proven track record saw him head north in exchange for a future third-round pick.

Daniher, restricted to 15 games from 2018-20 by injury after 93 games from 2013-17, was also linked directly to the Lions medical team. Or more particularly Blanch, who had worked with him at Essendon.

A member of football royalty at Essendon, Daniher found himself on the Brisbane radar after a would-be move to Sydney 12 months earlier fell at the last hurdle when the Swans and the Bombers couldn’t agree on a trade.

A country boy at heart, Daniher simply wanted out of the football ‘bubble’ in Melbourne. He wasn’t going to WA or SA and when Sydney hadn’t worked out he’d become a firm Lions focus. After a lot of behind-the-scenes work the easy-going high-flyer joined Brisbane as a restricted free agent.

Fort, a Geelong local who had played eight games in three years with the Cats after being drafted at #65 in 2018, was the last of the ‘Dynamic Dozen’. A life-time Lions supporter who had rejoiced as a youngster in the club’s 2001-02-03 premiership hat-trick, he was secured as valuable ruck back-up ahead of the 2021 National Draft when Brisbane exchanged pick #50 and a third-round pick this year for Fort and pick #41. And in 21 rounds he’s more than doubled his career games tally.

There is a common thread to each of the 12 targeted recruits. Every time there was a trade required the Lions team got it done. It is a significant factor in the recruiting world because it sends a strong message to would-be recruits … you commit to us, we commit to you, we get it done.

It is all part of the package that has made the Lions a destination club. And with the superb new Brighton Homes Arena at Springfield soon to open, and the recruiting job never done, Ambrogio and his team will soon have another showpiece temptation to dangle in the face of would-be Lions.

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