Zorko: Lions will ‘catch fire’

Brisbane veteran Dayne Zorko is adamant the Lions will soon “catch fire” and overcome their sluggish start to the season to again contend for the AFL premiership.

Heading into Thursday night’s battle with the GWS Gians in Canberra, last year’s beaten grand-finalists have lost four from six in 2024 campaign that can’t afford too many more defeats if they are to again give themselves a genuine shot at wining the flag.

“You can certainly catch fire in this competition,” Zorko said on Monday.

“We’re looking to do that. We know our best is very good and is good enough, so we need to keep searching for ways to get our best on a more consistent basis.

“The mood’s still high. We feel extremely confident that we can beat anyone on any day.

“Results and moments haven’t been going our way at the moment but we feel like it can turn, and turn quickly.”

The former Brisbane captain admitted the Lions paid a heavy price for too much hand-passing in wet conditions in their 26-point weekend loss to Geelong at the Gabba.

“Our effort was there, I don’t think you could question us on that, but if anything we just didn’t play the conditions well enough,” Zorko said.

“Geelong seemed to have a simpler game-plan and executed it a lot better than what we did. I think we hand-passed way too much.

“We probably needed to identify that a little bit better and faster on the night.

“As leaders and older personnel, we should have identified that we needed to kick a lot more than we did.”

“We got that wrong on the night, but credit to Geelong – they were fantastic.”

Zorko said the Lions’ inaccuracy in front of goal was also costly, with Brisbane kicking 13 behinds and just four goals.

“We still had opportunities to score and once again, we were quite inaccurate in front of goal., he said.

“Four goals (and) 13 (behinds) is probably just not going to get the job done.”

The Lions will be without ruckman Oscar McInerney on Thursday night after he was replaced against Geelong suffering concussion.