Brisbane has brought back Noah Answerth and Jarrod Berry for Saturday's clash against Fremantle, a selection call that gives Chris Fagan two of the workers he has been missing while the Lions try to steady a side that has looked short of balance.
The timing matters because Brisbane has spent the past month patching holes left by role players rather than stars, and the gap has shown. Answerth has played just three games in 2026 after back-to-back concussions, while Berry has managed six, leaving the Lions to shuffle around the absence of players who were central to their premiership structure.
That structure was built on pieces that rarely drew the spotlight but gave Fagan the match-up answers that let Brisbane breathe. Brandon Starcevich was the set-and-forget defender, used on the opposition's most dangerous medium to small forward, while Cal Ah Chee was the equivalent at the other end of the ground and was sent to Ollie Dempsey on a wing in the premiership triumph after Dempsey had torched Brisbane three weeks earlier. Starcevich's final game in Lions colours was a blanketing effort on Patrick Dangerfield in the Grand Final, eight days after Dangerfield's preliminary final performance. Berry, meanwhile, has long been viewed as the ultimate winger.
Brisbane still has plenty of talent, but the loss of those role players and foot soldiers has left the side out of kilter. The Lions have struggled to plug the gaps in defence and on the wings while dealing with injuries and uneven form, and that has left the focus on the star midfield a little too narrow. Starcevich moved home to Western Australia to join the Eagles via free agency at the end of last season, and his departure has only sharpened the pressure on the players left behind to cover the same ground.
Saturday's game against Fremantle will tell Brisbane a lot about whether the recall of Answerth and Berry can do more than patch the holes for one afternoon. If they settle quickly, the Lions regain some of the shape that made them so hard to play against. If they do not, the problem will remain the same: Brisbane can pile up talent, but it still needs the sort of dependable support that turns that talent into a complete side.
