{"id":77614,"date":"2026-08-21T23:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T23:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/77614\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T23:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T23:16:07","slug":"brisbane-lions-coach-chris-fagan-feels-sorry-for-sydney-swans-as-afl-finals-clash-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/77614\/","title":{"rendered":"Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan ‘feels sorry’ for Sydney Swans as AFL finals clash looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Embattled Sydney will brace for further fallout from the scandal that has rocked the AFL club, while finalising preparations for a dead rubber against North Melbourne on Sunday.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, five players \u2014 Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, Riley Bice and James Jordon<\/a> \u2014 were suspended for the rest of the season for “breaching club standards”.<\/p>\n

Separately, a police investigation continues into the events at East Melbourne’s Pullman Hotel in the early hours of Monday morning.<\/p>\n

On Friday, coach Dean Cox distanced himself from any blame for the events at the hotel<\/a>, while captain Callum Mills said “we believe that the five players have let us down”.<\/p>\n

Swans chairman Andrew Pridham on Wednesday said the club-imposed sanctions would “torpedo” the second-placed Swans’ premiership hopes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Dean<\/p>\n

Swans coach Dean Cox (left) and captain Callum Mills spoke to reporters on Friday. (Getty Images: Darrian Traynor)<\/p>\n

In their SCG qualifying final, Sydney will most likely face reigning premiers Brisbane, who all but locked in third place with Friday night’s 63-point win over Collingwood,<\/a> unless Hawthorn leapfrog them on percentage with a big win over West Coast.<\/p>\n

The team that finishes fourth plays runaway minor premiers Fremantle while third faces a decimated and embattled Sydney.<\/p>\n

“I don’t mind either or, to be honest with you,” Lions coach Chris Fagan said after Friday night’s match.<\/p>\n

“It’s just good to get the double chance.<\/p>\n

“And I’m sort of thinking that Sydney have lost some players obviously due to the unfortunate thing that happened last week. But in some ways that can galvanise a club too.<\/p>\n

“The guys that do get to play just might go that much harder and be that much more difficult to beat.<\/p>\n

“So either way I’m just happy we finished top four. We travel well. Either way we’re going to have to travel, so we’ll take whatever comes our way.”<\/p>\n

McKenna, Morris magic lifts Lions to vital big win over Pies<\/a><\/p>\n

Brisbane Lions put the foot down against Collingwood, with magic from Conor McKenna and Logan Morris seeing the premiers take a strong grip on third spot.<\/p>\n

Fagan hasn’t spoken to his players specifically about the Sydney situation.<\/p>\n

“There’s been so much publicity around it \u2014 it almost goes without saying,” Fagan said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t feel like I need to have a conversation with my players because it’s pretty obvious, the repercussions for not thinking through your actions too clearly. And yeah, it’s really unfortunate.<\/p>\n

“I do feel sorry for Sydney because they have been such a terrific club in that regard for a long, long time but these sorts of things happen. It’s just a bit of a head-scratcher, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

“You just wonder what was going through people’s heads to let that occur.”<\/p>\n

Sydney on Friday disputed assertions there were more than five players in the East Melbourne hotel room<\/a> on Monday morning.<\/p>\n

James Rowbottom, Harry Cunningham, Angus Sheldrick, Caiden Cleary and Tom Hanily will replace the banned five players for the North Melbourne clash.<\/p>\n

That game takes place after Sydney’s AFLW clash with Essendon as part of a double header.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Embattled Sydney will brace for further fallout from the scandal that has rocked the AFL club, while finalising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[108190,77,99799,111092,408,1074,10582,247,5009],"class_list":["post-77614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-scandal","tag-afl","tag-afl-finals","tag-andrew-pridham","tag-brisbane-lions","tag-chris-fagan","tag-scg","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-swans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}