The incredible truth behind iconic AFL image… and what legend really said to Lions coach

It is the friendship that has turned football’s most iconic figure back into a proper fan of the game, a relationship that is immortalised by an image captured an instant after the 2024 grand final.

Alastair Lynch was as strong on his feet as any to play the game, but Brisbane’s three-time premiership forward almost fell over at a revelation from AFL legend Leigh Matthews last year.

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Interviewing his former coach at a “sporties”, a function where greats fatten their wallet reliving past glories to fans eager for the inside scoop, Lynch waited for the right moment to pop the question to the man of the moment.

He wanted to know what Matthews was feeling when he embraced Chris Fagan on the MCG after Brisbane’s triumph over Sydney when captured in a photograph Lions chairman Andrew Wellington suspects he has seen 10,000 times since.

“It was just one of those chats you have on stage and I said to him that it looked like a pretty special moment,” Lynch told foxsports.com.au.

“You know there are times when Leigh can look at you and the eyes almost go through you, and you think, ‘Oh. OK.’ But he said, ‘Lynchy, I think that was the best moment in my sporting life’. And I said, ‘Seriously?’.

“That was a very special moment for him. He said he didn’t want to go over (to Chris initially) but then, in the moment, he did because it was such a special time.

“I am not exactly sure why, but it was probably due to their relationship and the hard yards they had gone through to start with, because they were still only winning five games in those first couple of years.

“I think he was really supportive of Fages and was trying to give Fages the confidence that he could get the job done, so it was obviously a very special moment for both Leigh and for Fages.”

When reflecting on the moment this week during an extended interview with Fox Footy that will air during the grand final presentation on Kayo Sports and Channel 504, Matthews said he was not usually someone who offered a hug.

“I had the honour of presenting the cup if the Lions won and … I was down on the interchange bench, of course, when the siren went, and there’s just great pandemonium in the excitement with all the people involved,” he said.

“And I sort of looked over and Fages was kind of standing there, a bit like thinking to himself, ‘What am I supposed to be doing now at this point of the game?’ And I just saw him and our eyes kind of locked and I just gave him a thumbs up.

“I’m not a hugger in general terms but that embrace with him was just such a special moment. I think all I said to him is ‘Mate, you’ve always been a premiership coach. Now you’ve coached a premiership team. And that’s what coaching is all about.’”

It is now over a month since Fagan, who presented a framed photograph of the moment to his mate and mentor as a Christmas gift, broke the records Matthews held for the most games coached at Brisbane and the most wins as a Lions coach.

Should they win on Saturday, he will also match the master as a hat-trick winning premiership coach. But it is doubtful that achievement will ever sit overly comfortably with the humble Brisbane coach.

“Leigh Matthews has been even more generous in his comments about me, which is a little humbling, to be honest,” Fagan said.

“It doesn’t quite feel right to be breaking his record, but anyway, hopefully we can just live side-by-side in the history of the Brisbane Lions, and the people will appreciate what both of us did in our times here.”

Riding the bumps with footy’s ‘best player of the 20th century’

Matthews has done it all in football, but it is worth listing just a handful of the incredible achievements to demonstrate the reason Lynch was so astonished by the answer from the legend.

The AFL recognises the four-time premiership Hawk as the “best player of the 20th century”. The Players Association’s premier award was renamed in honour of the 1975 Coleman Medallist.

Nicknamed “Lethal”, he is also in the AFL and Hawthorn’s Team of the Century and features in the Australian Football, Sport Australia, Hawthorn, Collingwood and Brisbane Halls of Fame for his exploits in footy over four decades.

Those who have played for Matthews say that he could rattle you with his steely gaze. But as a coach he fostered bonds between players and understood the emotional ties and what made them play for each other and the club.

Winning football games became an addiction for Matthews. But he learnt early on the importance of sentiment and empathy and that there was more to life than footy despite his obsession and reputation as an on-field enforcer.

Monday marks 50 years since his partner in on-ball brilliance at Hawthorn, their former skipper Peter Crimmins, died of testicular cancer at the age of 28 in one of football’s saddest stories.

The Hawks won the 1976 flag over North Melbourne three days before Crimmins died.

Just before the first bounce in 1976, coach John Kennedy read to his team a telegram from the “little fella” saying he would be riding “every bump, every tackle with you all the way”. They were never going to lose.

It is no surprise Matthews won the Peter Crimmins Perpetual Memorial Trophy eight times in his career, including a hat-trick after his on-ball mate’s death, such was his on-field drive.

Matthews subsequently evolved into a master coach after a legendary career, ending the dreaded ‘Colliwobbles’ for the Magpies with the drought-breaking premiership in 1990 before guiding the Brisbane Lions to a famous hat-trick of flags.

But once his day-to-day involvement ended, the intensity of his passion for the game ebbed for a period even as he provided outstanding observations in various roles including for Fox Footy, at least until Brisbane began bouncing back up the ladder.

As Matthews wrote in his 2013 autobiography Accept The Challenge, he had mellowed once done with a lifestyle that proved “an obsession and an addiction” over four decades.

“I suppose when you get older, maybe you get more mellow and start looking at the big picture a bit more,” he told the Sunday Herald Sun when promoting the book.

“Now that I am retired, I don’t have the enormous ups, but I don’t have the lows either.”

Brisbane chairman Andrew Wellington recalls hearing Matthews being asked frequently who he barracked for. The Brisbane director would offer a similar refrain each time.

“I remember when we would play Hawthorn or Collingwood and people would say to Leigh, ‘Who would you barrack for?’” Wellington said on Tuesday.

“And he always used to say, ‘I’m not a fan. I go to the football and enjoy watching it, but I am not a fan who barracks for a team.’”

Friendship sparks the fan within

Among the beauties of footy is that it is considered a sport for all shapes and sizes.

At some stage on Saturday at the MCG, it seems a certainty that Fremantle’s American beanpole Mason Cox will tangle with Lions veteran Dayne Zorko, who is 36cm shorter. Both have enjoyed long careers despite their contrasting statures.

But until Fagan’s triumphant reign with the Brisbane Lions, it was considered inconceivable that someone who had not played at the highest level could coach with success in the AFL. He is, as Matthews said, “a one-off”.

There is no comparison between Matthews and Fagan in terms of their playing achievements. But that is not to say Fagan was no good – he earned great respect playing in Tasmania in a career that paved the way for him to become a master coach.

“It is an amazing story. He had a tremendous reputation in Tassie for both playing and coaching,” Lynch said.

“When I was a kid I played in a southern Tassie game against the north, so we played against each other, and (he was) this feisty midfielder and someone I was looking up to. I didn’t have much to do with him, but he used to play at my old club at Hobart and then I played against him for a couple of years.

“But Fages had heaps of experience and was widely respected in Tassie and I suppose that is why Neale Daniher gave him that opportunity to go to Melbourne (as footy boss), and he has just gone from strength to strength.

“It was a bit of an interesting choice to appoint him as a coach, I reckon, having come from a footy manager’s role, but he has obviously done an outstanding job and pretty much from day one he has had Leigh there as a mentor.”

Matthews touched on the role Fagan has played in rejuvenating Brisbane as a power after it bottomed about a decade after his departure as senior coach.

The Lions struggled to win games and were struggling to draw crowds of significance, let alone retain top tier talent when Fagan was appointed.

“I was on the board, but we were in a pretty bad place in terms of on-field performance and he was well recommended by people who knew him well, which I think is the most important thing in the coaching search,” Matthews said.

Brisbane gambled on Fagan, but he had been the footy operations boss during Hawthorn’s brilliant hat-trick from 2013 to 2015 and there was another factor in his favour, with Matthews a few of years into his stint on the Brisbane board.

During regular coffees and dinners from the infancy of his time in Brisbane, Fagan and the legend along with their wives Ursula and Deborah have hit it off and forged the firmest of friendships based initially on respect and now on achievement.

They were there for Fagan when he was mired in the now discredited Hawthorn racism scandal, with an independent panel and subsequent investigations making no adverse findings against the coaches amid a “startling lack of evidence”.

“We’ve become a regular (foursome) for dinner together on a on a Wednesday night mostly during the during the football season … and we’ve become very good friends, I must admit,” Matthews said.

“What are we trying to do at that dinner? We’re trying to enjoy ourselves for a couple of hours. It’s a stressful time, coaching. Unfortunately, you lose every third week, no matter how good you are, so there’s a lot of stress and anxiety in coaching. So we enjoy those dinners immensely. (But) we obviously talk about the football … you can’t help but talk about what I think about certain things and what he thinks about certain things.

“I obviously observed him in the incredible trauma during that Hawthorn alleged racism stuff a few years ago (and) that was incredibly stressful and created so much anxiety. And he had to survive that, as Alistair Clarkson probably did the same.

“But it’s a friendship thing that we do our dinners. It’s really nothing to do with the fact that he coaches the Lions and I happen to be a board member.”

The Tasmanian doubted himself at times in the infancy of his reign but Matthews loved what he was doing with a young group as the Lions developed talent from its academy, lured Lachie Neale and Charlie Cameron from interstate and deliberately sourced country boys from Victoria with the belief they would flourish in the sunshine up north.

“The thing that I remember first about Chris Fagan is that after that first 12 months, the team performance hadn’t improved a whole lot, but it seemed calmer around the football department and the playing group. They wanted to be there,” Matthews said this week.

“The fact he had created this atmosphere and an environment within the group that people want to be involved with, that I thought was the first step (towards what) has made him a great.

“In his first couple of years of coaching, one of the things that hit me initially (is that) he didn’t make mass changes to the football department staff.

“Usually when the new senior coach comes in, you sort of bring a few people with you, things like that, (but) he effectively went with the same group of people in the back room that had been there in the previous year or two. He was prepared to give everybody a chance. He would actually see how they did their jobs, including the players, and move forward.”

There is something else at play. The friendship being forged between the legend and the late-blossoming coach was clearly having an impact on Matthews’ love of the game as well.

Just as Lynch was left surprised by Matthews’ answer at the ‘sporties’, Wellington distinctly remembers the response from Matthews after Lincoln McCarthy’s magnificent mark and last-minute match winning goal against Geelong in 2019.

“I hadn’t heard him say (what he did to Lynch) but it does not surprise me he would say that,” the Brisbane chairman said.

“I remember the year that we jumped up (the ladder) and we had beaten Geelong in, I reckon, the second last round of the season when Linc McCarthy took a big mark and kicked the goal.

“Obviously Linc had come from Geelong after struggling with his body and I remember Leigh coming down to the rooms after that Geelong game and he said to Chris something along the lines of, ‘Geez. You’ve made me feel like a fan again.’

“I can’t put extra words into Leigh’s mouth, but I would say he was at the point where he felt emotionally invested as opposed to interested. That is how I interpreted it, and then the product of that is getting joy out of seeing a win.”

Reading the game and the player

Football has changed in the two decades between the Lions dynasties and so have footballers, according to those in the know, who suggest the current generation respond better to encouragement than a fire and brimstone approach.

That is not to say Fagan does not deliver a spray on occasion but, as Lynch said, nor does he possess Matthews’ withering gaze that would send a shiver down the backs of even the toughest footballers if he felt a task had been shirked.

“Fages seems like a very deep thinker of the game and a very supportive coach and while we hear periodically he can put it on the players, that’s not his go-to,” Lynch, a star in Brisbane’s three-peat back in the 2000s, said.

“I feel from the outside he’s more a ‘put the arm around and I’ll support you all the way’ (type coach) and in the end, he gets repaid more often than not. But I probably don’t see enough of him inside (the rooms).

“But obviously in different ways they are incredibly good coaches, more in the way they manage their people perhaps more than tactics, I suppose. And again, that’s probably unfair on Fages. But Leigh’s greatest asset was getting us all going in the same direction and turning the most complicated into something simple.”

Wellington has watched the way Fagan goes about his coaching and has worked alongside Matthews on the Brisbane board for more than a decade.

They are different people, he said, but what has struck him about the pair is how well they read people and situations and respond accordingly.

“On one level, they are actually very different in the way you see them and the way they are perceived,” Wellington said.

“Leigh has that background as one of the greatest players to play the game. He was a successful coach even before he came to Brisbane and then he always had that reputation of having a hard edge, you would say.

“Chris is, and again, I have never seen him play, but people tell me he was a very good player in Tasmania but notwithstanding that, he never played at the elite level (and) he hadn’t coached when he came to the Lions and he would have been seen by people, I think, in terms of where he sat on the spectrum of hard to soft as being at the softer, more people-focused end of the spectrum in how he interacted and dealt with people. So in that sense, you would say the two of them are starkly different.

“I suppose that when I look at them, and I have had the chance to not just see Chris as a coach, but also to see Leigh operate as a director of the club, there are a couple of things that are key to both of them and are very similar.

“One is that they both read people very well, notwithstanding that Leigh is known as having a hard edge, but he does read people well and he understands what people are looking for and what people value. I think he is good at that.

“It is obvious that Chris is really good at that as well. He is good at understanding what is important to his players and tailoring what he does depending on the player.”

Matthews is firm in answering that he does not see what Fagan does in the coaching box or in the day to day operations. But he admires his broader approach around the footy club.

“He’s developed a great bond with his players. I mean, his players generally admire and respect him and like him,” he said.

“Those three things – you’ve got to respect the coach because he is doing things on behalf of the team, but you’ve got to believe that the the coach believes in you and is on your side. And I think he has got a great manner and ability and you can see it in the way players react to him.

“They genuinely respect him, but yes, they genuinely like him as a person because, in the main, they know he’s on their side.”

The psychological edge

Former Brisbane captain Jonathan Brown featured under Matthews in the hat-trick of Lions flags and said it is clear they know how to make a side peak when it matters most, as evidenced by their premiership successes.

“There is a calmness about them, there’s no doubt about it. That quiet calmness makes you believe, and they just set you up well,” Brown told foxfooty.com.au.

“They have teams in good psychological states coming into big games, and they promote what works in those big games with their style and the way they play.

“Leigh’s had an influence on ‘Fages’. They speak quite often, and Leigh’s on the board obviously, and there’s definitely similarities in having that calming, guiding hand for not just the team, but the whole club. It’s enviable, isn’t it?”

The mental strength is not a fluke, with both Matthews and Fagan making it a point of their coaching to try to understand their players and how to harness their best.

They are also open-minded in their willingness to consider different schools of thought and to adapt to circumstances as they change. After all, very few seasons progresses without a dip in form or a moment of crisis, even for the very best.

During Matthews’s reign as coach, he worked alongside Dr. Phil Jauncey, a leading Australian psychologist who was Brisbane’s mental skills and performance coach, to further his understanding of his squad.

“Leigh was an early adopter of that with Phil Jauncey, doing psychological profiles of his players and understanding what types of personalities they were in terms of whether someone was an enforcer, or whether someone was a thinker, those sorts of things,” Wellington said.

“He knew which of his players was an enforcement type of personality and I think Leigh would openly say himself that he was an enforcer type of personality. That’s very similar to the way Chris approaches things.

“And then I think the other thing that’s very similar for both of them – and considering both of them have been in the game a long time – but I find them both great thinkers and both very open-minded.

“I will talk to Leigh about women’s football and he’s got positive views and you can have a good discussion with Leigh about … what we’re doing in women’s football, which I think you couldn’t say for every person of his generation, but he’s just open-minded. He’s not one of those people who sits back and says ‘we shouldn’t be changing the rules of the game, (that) we should keep things the way they are.’ He’s not like that at all. He’s very open-minded and Chris is the same.

“You look at the way Chris has been prepared to do things differently to the way that other coaches traditionally might have done. So they’re probably the two big similarities for me between them, that ability to read people and have that open-mindedness and a preparedness to learn and change and to adjust goes on.

“Notwithstanding they are probably different personality types and they are from different backgrounds, I think they are strengths that both of them share that I think are really important in making a good coach.”

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