Where the bloody hell are Hugh? Brisbane are fading and waning before our eyes

Sight is different to vision. You can see something, but the vision can confuse you. We are seeing Brisbane fade before our eyes yet not believe the picture.

We have been waiting for them to click. Waiting for them to once more routinely win at home. Waiting for them to rip a good team apart and look like Brisbane again.

Currently they are ninth and with half a season done face the prospect of clinging to a finals berth only by dent of an AFL marketing thought bubble. They would be the ultimate wildcard team no one would want to play in desperado round.

The Lions now look less like the rampant team that won the last two flags and more like a waning team that has played preliminary finals or better in five of the last six years. They look tired if not old. They look worn down. They look like they have lost hunger and an edge.

The margins when any team win a flag is small and those margins are hurting the Lions now. They are a good side that is suffering from playing more games than others for the last six years.

A side that has the hunger does not have a quarter like Brisbane had last week when they conceded the largest third quarter score in VFL/AFL history to GWS. In the last three losses the opposition has scored a combined 386 points. They were previously superb at denying scores from turning the ball over, ranked fourth last year, but this year they are 14th.

If you look at their six losses for the season, they have conceded 117.5 points per game, which is the worst of any team other than the West Coast Eagles. They have not conceded scores at this rate under Chris Fagan since 2017.

Fagan said if you don’t consistently play with effort you are vulnerable. And Brisbane are vulnerable. Defensively it hurts them.

This is not just an absence of effort, there is an absence of personnel. The fact Harris Andrews is out there masks the fact he manages bad knees weekly and is playing below par. Jack Payne ripped his patella in round 14 last year and has not been seen since and there is no time frame for when he is back. Ok, they won a flag without him, but other things were going right last year that are not now.

Brandon Starcevich was lost to concussion and then to West Coast, Ryan Lester has missed the last couple of weeks and will miss up to another month with a calf injury. Dayne Zorko did a quad ahead of the Geelong game and has been missing.

They saw Cal Ah Chee walk to Adelaide for nothing and after years of injury trouble Kiddy Coleman is once more injured while Eric Hipwood is still out and Oscar Allen arrived needing to manage his bad knee