Sydney Swans face Brisbane Lions carrying more than just AFL finals pressure originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
When Sydney hosts reigning 2025 AFL premiers Brisbane at the SCG in Saturday afternoon’s Qualifying Final, the form guide might as well go out the window, because anything could happen.
As has been well documented the Swans enter this year’s AFL finals without five key players after the club stood down Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, Riley Bice and James Jordon for the rest of the 2026 season following the alleged events in Melbourne on August 17.
None of the five has been charged and the club has been careful to separate its internal sanctions, described by CEO Matthew Pavlich as a response to a ‘standards breach’, from the ongoing Victorian Police investigation.
But from a purely football-related perspective the practical impact of the past fortnight on the Swans playing and coaching group is undeniable.
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They may have risen to the challenge of an emotional final round home match-up with the Kangaroos, but can they keep doing it with the stakes considerably higher? Or will the adrenaline eventually wear off?
At the back Blakey’s loss is a massive one, while Heeney and Warner are two of Sydney’s most important forwards and their absence strips real firepower and composure from a group that now has to find a way to win at least three high-pressure matches without them to lift this season’s AFL trophy.
Add to this the wider disruption of a highly fractured build-up – players fronting media, a club apologising publicly, an active police investigation running in parallel with finals preparation – and it’s fair to ask whether Sydney can compartmentalise well enough to beat a Brisbane side that belted them by eight goals the last time they met in June.
The case for the Swans is that adversity has sharpened this group before and a home final in front of a parochial SCG crowd is about as favourable a stage as they could hope for as they begin an unlikely AFL premiership tilt.
The case against is more straightforward. Finals footy tends to punish teams short on depth and rhythm – and Sydney is now missing genuine quality at exactly the wrong time while also carrying a collective emotional weight none of the Swans players or coaching staff have experience before.
Brisbane by contrast arrives in Sydney this weekend relatively drama-free, battle-hardened from back-to-back AFL premierships and clearly the form side of the two in recent meetings.
Sydney’s challenge on Saturday isn’t really about match-ups or game plans, it’s about mindset and whether a club still deep in crisis management mode can find 22 players ready to play finals footy against a fierce and experienced opponent.
A win, or even a narrow loss, will put the AFL on notice that these Bloods are’t finished yet in 2026.
But a heavy defeat to the Lions will likely signal a straight sets exit is looming for Callum Mills, Dean Cox and Co.