Brisbane Lions embracing underdog status ahead of AFLW grand final against all-conquering North Melbourne

Brisbane Lions coach Craig Starcevich expects his players will relish their underdog status in the AFLW grand final as they seek to upset the powerful North Melbourne machine. On a remarkable 26-game winning streak, the Kangaroos start hot favourites at Ikon Park on Saturday night in their attempt to become the first team in the history of the women’s competition to win back-to-back flags. Their record-breaking run includes three wins over the Lions by an average margin of 34 points since their last defeat - which was against the same opponents in the 2023 grand final. Brisbane’s third consecutive decider against North is their seventh grand final in the competition’s 10 seasons, as they aim for an unprecedented third premiership. “We’ve been underdogs for 10 years, so it’s not new ground for us,” Starcevich said. “Our group love being told they can’t do stuff, so we’ll see what happens in terms of their response for tomorrow. “But we’ve got a pretty tough, resilient group that love these sort of challenges.” On a nine-game winning streak of their own, Brisbane have adopted the famous “if it bleeds, we can kill it” mentality - used by AFL legend Leigh Matthews more than two decades ago - as they seek to topple the seemingly unbeatable Kangaroos. “(We’ve got) nothing but admiration for what North have done, clearly,” Starcevich said. “We’ve had this train of thought before when we’ve played North and haven’t got there. “But I just feel this time around, I feel like the last nine weeks have been pretty good. “We’ve been building nicely and looking forward to this type of challenge.” North survived a huge scare in their preliminary final, trailing Melbourne by 19 points before storming home to keep their flag dream alive. The winning margin of 10 points marked what was by far the Kangaroos’ closest contest in more than a year. “We felt like it was the ideal preparation for us, being challenged in that way,” North coach Darren Crocker said. “We looked at a few things this week where we probably got a little bit sloppy in a couple of areas of our game, just because we hadn’t been challenged to that extent. “We’ve been able to look at that closely this week and hopefully address that and tidy up a couple of things.” North have just about put together the perfect season, claiming most of the major individual awards on their march to the grand final. AFLW best-and-fairest Ash Riddell and AFL Players Association MVP Jasmine Garner will lead their premiership charge alongside fellow All-Australians Tahlia Randall and Blaithin Bogue. Brisbane pair Courtney Hodder and Jennifer Dunne also won All-Australian blazers, while the Lions are superbly led by Ally Anderson and Isabel Dawes in the midfield, with Dakota Davidson a possible match-winner in attack. Both sides named unchanged line-ups from their preliminary finals, with North midfielder Mia King the hard-luck story. A mainstay in the Kangaroos’ side when fit, King recovered from a knee injury to put herself in the frame for a grand final recall, but was not selected. Crocker said picking King after seven weeks on the sidelines would have been too big a risk and forced too many structural changes to his side.