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“I’m hoping for the experience we’ll be better for it. It’s going to be a great challenge.″
Andrews said the Cats had shut down their kicking game, and the Lions had to be stronger in the contest. The Cats won the contested ball and tackle count by 16 in the qualifying final.
“Yeah they did. There’s opportunities for us to change angles a little bit more and probably need to be a bit stronger in the contest as well to get played in our front half.
“They were fantastic, they’re an awesome team and we’re going to have, you know, our work cut out for us but really excited and if we bring our best it’ll be a good match.”
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Dunkley said that Brisbane had learned much from that heavy loss to the Cats. “They taught us plenty from that game and we obviously reviewed it before the Gold Coast game and will again this week…they taught us a few lessons on how they want to play against us.”
Dunkley, who will play in his third grand final since joining the Lions, highlighted work rate and connection as the issues in the last encounter.
“It probably comes down to work rate to be honest, like they defend so you’ve to work harder and work together. We probably learned we weren’t as connected as we are normally…we’ll look at the tapes and get ready for it next week.″
Andrews revealed that gaining some measure of revenge against Collingwood after the narrow 2023 grand final loss had been a focus for the players and coach Chris Fagan in the lead-in to the preliminary final, which the Lions won impressively by 29 points.
“It was great,” the defender said shortly after the victory over the Magpies. “Can’t undo what happened in ’23, but we definitely did, a few of us guys that have been playing throughout that time, we really did want to get a little of revenge, bit of reckoning – I think that was the word thrown up. Yeah it was awesome.
“I’m just so proud.”
Andrew confirmed that atoning for the 2023 grand final defeat had been a topic.
“Yeah, we definitely talked about it, as a group. I think Fages [coach Chris Fagan] brought it up a couple of times during the week, just to get the boys on edge and understand that you know, we feel like we owe Collingwood one.
“There was a lot of guys who probably didn’t play that day and who were thinking ‘what the hell are you talking about’.”
