{"id":91381,"date":"2026-09-09T00:19:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/91381\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T00:19:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T00:19:16","slug":"zac-baileys-brisbane-lions-deal-called-most-extraordinary-contract-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/91381\/","title":{"rendered":"Zac Bailey’s Brisbane Lions deal called ‘most extraordinary contract ever!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zac Bailey’s Brisbane Lions deal called ‘most extraordinary contract ever!’<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brisbane Lions<\/a> star Zac Bailey has put pen to paper on an eight-year deal to stay with the club, turning his back on what we think were more lucrative offers.<\/p>\n

Now set to be a Lion for life, as is the case with every big deal, it has been dissected to within an inch of its life.<\/p>\n

Eight years is a long, long time and we know how fickle football can be, but Bailey now gets peace of mind for the rest of his football career.<\/p>\n

We have seen big deals before, but none like this.<\/p>\n

MORE:Western Bulldogs have ideal Zak Butters ‘contingency plan’ in free agency<\/a><\/p>\n

And Kane Cornes, who was on SEN’s Locked In, had something rather interesting to say about Bailey’s deal.<\/p>\n

“The Zac Bailey contract, now this isn’t an overstatement here, this is the most extraordinary AFL contract ever signed,” Cornes said<\/a>. “He’s gonna be 35 years of age for Zac Bailey, who’s a very nice footballer, but he’s not Nick Daicos, and he’s not Buddy Franklin and even Buddy wasn’t getting this deal.<\/p>\n

“Now I don’t know if I’m even critical of it, cause it feels like they got him for less than what Adelaide were paying. But it’s just extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it is a great effort for his management to leverage three more years out of the Lions than probably what they would have been comfortable with.”<\/p>\n

Bailey a Lion for life<\/p>\n

It was thought that Bailey was heading to SA with the Adelaide Crows<\/a>, who, according to reports, offered more money, but the forward\/midfielder turned his back on that and re-signed.<\/p>\n

With Lachie Neale on the way out, a spot has opened up for more midfield minutes, which we now think will go to Bailey as the Lions look to cover the loss of Neale.<\/p>\n

But eight years is the big talking point here, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

We don’t begrudge any player getting the most out of negotiations, because we know how quickly things can change, and Bailey must be on cloud nine right now.<\/p>\n

He’s got his future sorted, and now he can focus on this year’s finals series as the Lions go for three in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zac Bailey’s Brisbane Lions deal called ‘most extraordinary contract ever!’ originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[404,99,408,133172,5955,9246,34625],"class_list":["post-91381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brisbane","tag-adelaide-crows","tag-brisbane","tag-brisbane-lions","tag-buddy-franklin","tag-kane-cornes","tag-the-lions","tag-zac-bailey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91381","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=91381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}