Chris Fagan’s name has not yet been thrown up in the perennial end-of-season debate over who should emerge the fitting winner of coach of the year but on the eve of the 62-year-old’s fifth consecutive finals series it is worth considering his 2023 performance in the context of his public and private journey over the past 11 months.
Such accolades are clearly not what he is chasing as the Lions knock on the premiership door yet again, but in simple win-loss terms Fagan has joined Chris Scott as the most successful AFL coach of the past five years and could go past the Geelong coach in the finals.
Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan – is this the year for him and his club?Credit: Getty Images
Football’s poster boy for recruitment and player retention, Fagan has, under the guidance of Greg Swann, reformed the club and – what friend and former player Luke Hodge describes as – its “fractured culture”.
But the eve of another September sits a far cry from Monday, September 19, 2022. Fresh from a preliminary final belting by Geelong, Fagan learned he was one target in a series of historic allegations by a group of First Nations players and their partners in an article to be published by the ABC.
In the days that followed he stepped away from the game as he awaited the AFL’s stated intention to resolve the devastating and complex matter by Christmas. Fagan, who has from the outset strenuously denied the allegations against him, barely left his house for the next two weeks, stepping outside for exercise only at night when he hoped he wouldn’t run into other people.
