The Swans’ faith sets them apart from the paper Lions. NATHAN BURKE explains why.

ROUND 22 usually throws up some interesting results and while the outcome of the Brisbane-Sydney clash may not seem interesting on the surface it did highlight the gulf between two seemingly even teams.
On paper these sides appear close, but in reality they are poles apart.
At the start of the season I was not on my own in predicting the Lions to be contenders.
I think most supposedly learned football people tipped them to factor into the September action.
And you can’t blame them as there was some solid supporting evidence.
The Lions made the finals last season, they recruited readymade AFL players, they seemingly addressed deficiencies and they apparently loved the game plan and their coach.
But alas, a final tally of seven wins and 15 losses has them much closer to a wooden spoon than a premiership cup.
To make my pre-season predictions zero from two, I tipped the Swans to drop out of the finals race and again I was not on my own.
Unlike Brisbane the Swans didn’t appear to have addressed deficiencies. They did recruit a goalkicker, but not much else and their stars seemed to be getting a little bit long in the tooth.
But here we are in September and the Lions are recovering from mad Monday while the Swans are hosting a home final against Carlton.
So what went right for one team and so wrong for the other?
Let’s look at the Lions. Basically they gambled and it didn’t come off.
The gamble was to top up the list in an effort to take advantage of what they must have seen as a premiership window.
They went on an extraordinary buying spree that included five trades.
Obviously Brendan Fevola was the big name, but along with him they got Amon Buchanan from Sydney, Matt Maguire and Xavier Clarke from St Kilda, and Brent Staker from the West Coast Eagles.
Of those five, only Staker could be classed as any sort of success.
In the meantime they hurt several players by shopping them around to other clubs.
The thought of Jonathan Brown and Fevola patrolling the Gabba forwardline had us all seduced.
What we didn’t know was that Fevola was released by Carlton partly because his groin issues were chronic and not simply “a bit sore”.
Maguire and Clarke were different as they had been carrying severe injury concerns for the previous two seasons.
While Maguire started well, everyone who knew him had their fingers crossed as it seemed only a matter of time before his leg issues flared again.
Clarke’s chronic knee and hamstring concerns meant his wretched run continued as he managed only one game for the year.
Buchanan was stiff as a broken thumb kept him sidelined most of the season.
However, what seemed a reasonable gamble at the time was actually a longshot when you take into account the health of those recruited.
The other disappointing aspect of the Lions’ play was that it was very un-Michael Voss like.
Last year we saw the emergence of a definitive game style based on uncompromising football.
As we expected of Vossy the team was built in his mould – hard, tough and with a never-say-die attitude.
It was this attitude that pushed them over the line more than once last year and with another year under Voss we had every reason to expect it would continue.
But sadly it didn’t and, if anything, the Lions were often defeated because of a fragile underbelly that was exposed at least once a game.
Even last weekend’s game was lost in the third quarter as the Swans piled on 5.5 to the Lions’ 0.2.
So the wash-up is the Lions took a big punt and disappointingly lost.
Hopefully Brisbane won’t be thinking its premiership window is still open and make the same mistake this off-season.
And with the salary cap concerns the Lions reportedly have I doubt whether they could even if they wanted to.
On the other hand the Sydney Swans have taken a much different path.
They picked up a disgruntled Daniel Brad­shaw, who was keen to get out of Brisbane after being shopped around, and this was their only major trade for an established player.
My worry was that the Swans’ biggest stars were quickly ageing and I didn’t know whether they could carry the load as they had in past years.
Brett Kirk, Adam Goodes, Jude Bolton and Ryan O’Keefe have been up for so long that I suspected they would need help and I couldn’t really see where it was going to come from.
But Paul Roos knew it was there and built from within rather than from outside like the Lions.
The players that beat the Lions last weekend were all at Sydney last year, apart from young draftees Lewis Jetta and Trent Dennis-Lane.
This faith in the squad is matched by the faith the players have in the coaches.
When Roos steps down at the end of the year his coaching reign will have been characterised by one thing – getting a team of players to play in the same style, for each other and the club like no other coach has done. Any coach who can come away with that as his legacy should be extremely proud.
And this is another area where the Lions and Swans differ.
Blind Freddy in the outer can tell you how the Swans play, but even football experts struggle to describe the Lions and their game style.
On paper there isn’t much between these teams. With Simon Black, Luke Power, Jared Brennan, Mitch Clark, Daniel Rich, Michael Rischitelli and others in the Brisbane side I would almost say the Lions have the edge.
But “on paper” assessments can’t take into account a group of players’ faith in their coach, game plan and each other.
And this is where the Swans have the edge and why they are playing in September.

– NATHAN BURKE