In an era where sports coaching often resembles corporate boardrooms with their obsession over analytics and scripted motivational speeches, Chris Fagan’s approach to reviving the Brisbane Lions reads like a throwback novel. Forget spreadsheets and Zoom meetings—Fagan’s playbook for rescuing a floundering team involves walking shoes, a phone charger, and the radical act of actually talking to humans. And yet, it works. Why? Because at its core, his method exposes a truth most high-performance cultures try to bury: even elite athletes are people, not machines. Let’s unpack why this matters in a world obsessed with efficiency over empathy.
The Myth of the Magic Bullet
When the Lions copped a 76-point drubbing from Carlton mid-season, the headlines wrote themselves: ‘Three-peat hopes dashed!’ ‘Dynasty over!’ But Fagan didn’t call a crisis meeting. He didn’t unleash a fiery locker-room rant or reshuffle the playbook. Instead, he did something subversive—he went for a 20km walk and called every player individually. To the casual observer, this might look like damage control. But here’s what they’re missing: Fagan isn’t fixing mistakes, he’s recalibrating humanity.
Personally, I think we’ve become conditioned to expect coaches to ‘do something dramatic’ after a loss. Fire someone! Change the formation! But Fagan’s genius lies in recognizing that motivation isn’t a switch to flip—it’s a garden to tend. His phone calls weren’t tactical debriefs; they were psychological audits. When he asked Lachie Neale, hypothetically, ‘How do you think you played?’ he wasn’t fishing for self-criticism. He was building a feedback loop where players become their own harshest judges—and sharpest coaches. That’s not management. That’s cultivating ownership.
The Power of Personal Connection
Let’s dissect the numbers: 20km walked, 20+ calls made. On paper, this seems inefficient. Why not a group Zoom? Or a memo? But Fagan understands a dirty secret of leadership: scalability kills nuance. A mass message gets the basics across; a one-on-one call gets you the truth. One player might be nursing an injury he hid to stay in the lineup. Another might be distracted by family stress. A third might feel disconnected from the team’s strategy. A group setting flattens these textures into noise.
What makes this particularly fascinating is how it defies the ‘grind culture’ narrative in sports. Fagan’s walk wasn’t a punishing trek to prove toughness—it was a deliberate choice to create mental space. Walking, as psychologists note, boosts creative problem-solving. By the time he finished those calls, he wasn’t just gathering data; he was synthesizing stories. That’s leadership as curation, not command.
Embracing Human Vulnerability
After the Carlton loss, Fagan admitted he couldn’t ‘see it coming.’ No red flags, no lack of effort. Just… a bad day. And here’s where he diverges from the cliché of the all-seeing coach: he accepts that randomness exists in sports. In my opinion, this humility is underrated. So many coaches construct elaborate narratives to explain every loss—‘We lacked intensity!’ ‘They outworked us!’—but Fagan shrugs and says, ‘Sometimes you’re just off.’ That honesty probably terrifies traditionalists. But it’s liberating for players. If a bad game doesn’t define you, redemption isn’t about penance—it’s about showing up next time.
This raises a deeper question: Why do we insist on pathologizing failure? When a team loses badly, pundits scramble to assign blame—poor tactics, bad culture, ‘choker’ mentalities. Fagan’s approach quietly rejects this. He’s saying, ‘We’re flawed. So what? Now let’s fix what’s fixable and forget the rest.’ It’s Stoicism meets sports science.
The Illusion of Control
Fagan’s refusal to dissect the Carlton loss on film is instructive. He didn’t obsess over footage because, as he put it, ‘The boys already knew.’ From my perspective, this reveals a subtle truth about accountability: over-analysis can become a crutch. When you watch a mistake 10 times in slow motion, it feels like you’re solving it. But Fagan knows that dwelling on the uncontrollable—a freakishly bad performance—is a trap. Instead, he redirected focus to agency: ‘What can we control now?’
This aligns with research in performance psychology: teams that ruminate on past failures underperform in future tasks. By choosing not to autopsy the loss, Fagan inoculated his squad against paralysis. A detail I find especially interesting is his acknowledgment of Gold Coast’s resurgence—despite their low ladder position, he treated them as title contenders. It’s a masterclass in contextual awareness. Great leaders don’t see standings; they see momentum.
Building a Culture of Accountability
The Lions’ response to Fagan’s check-ins—a 67-point thrashing of Hawthorn—wasn’t just about tactics. It was about alignment. Players weren’t trying to avoid blame; they were chasing pride. What many people don’t realize is that accountability isn’t enforced—it’s earned. When a coach trusts you to self-assess, you internalize the standards. You don’t play for Fagan; you play for the collective identity he’s nurtured. That’s how you sustain excellence through roster changes and injuries.
Looking ahead, the Lions’ quest for a three-peat will test whether this model scales. Dynasties in sports often collapse under their own weight—complacency, ego, burnout. But Fagan’s system is inherently adaptive. By decentralizing authority (‘I hope they’re thinking the same thing as I am’), he’s built a team that can survive individual slumps. The three-peat isn’t just about talent; it’s about trust.
Final Thoughts: The Unlikely Blueprint
Fagan’s story isn’t just about football. It’s a parable for leadership in any high-stakes arena. In a world racing toward AI-driven decision-making and hyper-optimized workflows, his success whispers a heretical idea: sometimes, the low-tech solution works best. Walking. Talking. Listening. Letting people own their mistakes. It’s not flashy. But then again, neither is winning seven games in a row after a gut-punch loss.
If there’s a broader lesson here, it’s that resilience isn’t forged in victory speeches or high-tech simulations. It’s built in the quiet moments—when a coach clocks 20km on his Fitbit to check in with his team, one call at a time.
