Chris Fagan is many things, teacher, philosopher and father-figure coach, but is he also life imitating art?
The quietly spoken Brisbane Lions coach, who is fiercely loyal to his players and rarely has a bad word to say about them, has often been compared to TV’s favourite sporting coach – Ted Lasso.
When asked about what he said to one player after they made a mistake during a big moment Fagan channelled his inner Lasso: “Be a goldfish, move on.”
The cryptic phrase about not dwelling on your mistakes appears a strong ethos in Fagan’s approach to coaching and it’s working.
During an open training session this week he was again asked about the Lasso comparison, and he wryly observed he liked Lasso because he was “human”.
But Fagan was keen to deny he is a real-life Lasso at his last pre-grand final press conference on Friday, accusing Lions star Dayne Zorko of “overplaying” the Lasso link despite admitting he had used the show to motivate his team.
“That Ted Lasso thing, that’s been overplayed, seriously. I showed them one episode, where (character) Dani Rojas had the yips … we needed to laugh at ourselves a little bit, so that’s the only time I used Ted Lasso,” Fagan said.
“That’s the only time I’ve used Ted Lasso. I think Zorko let the cat out of the bag there, didn’t he?
“I thought we’d have a bit of fun and lighten things up a bit.
“We’ll keep it calm (on Saturday) … we’ll do the same thing that we do every week, that’s the mistake you can make when you get to grand finals is you think you’ve got to change things around, but for us, our routine will be the same.”
Like Lasso, Fagan has never played at the highest level of his sport, but won a premiership with Hobart in the Tasmanian Football League in 1980 where he played 263 games.
The Lions have been derided for failing to deliver in the big moments in the big games but Fagan, like much-maligned Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley, has a record most AFL coaches would envy.
After taking over the reins at Brisbane, with the club at an all-time low in 2017, he has won 106 out of 183 games with a win ratio of 58 per cent. A remarkable feat given the club only won 10 games in his first two years and won the wooden spoon in 2017.
The Lions have played in four out of the last five preliminary finals and last year’s grand final – where they suffered a heartbreaking four-point loss to Collingwood.
“You’re the sum of all your experiences and we’re obviously disappointed about what happened in the grand final last year as close as it was,” Fagan said during this finals campaign.
While some coaches bark instructions down the phone from the coaching box with terrifying ferocity when things are not going their way or resort to stress balls like GWS coach Adam Kingsley, Fagan has a much more sanguine approach to his coaching.
With a background teaching in Tasmania, Fagan values nurturing the confidence of the young men he has carriage of rather than public dressing downs or engaging in mind games.
“It’s built around building relationships with players, having great trust in them because I think trust is the highest form of human motivation,” he told AFL 360 of his coaching philosophy.
“I know in my life when I have ever felt trusted by those I work with I do better work so that’s been a pillar of what we have tried to do.
“And loyalty is the other thing. I hang in with guys because I know this game is tough and hard and it takes alot experiences to become really good at it.”
Despite being one of the dominant teams of the 2020s, some of is stars have been heavily criticised for going missing in important games, but Fagan has never wavered in his support of them.
When calls have come to drop Joe Daniher or Cameron Rayner he has resisted. Both players retuned his faith in them with crucial goals in both the historic semifinal 44-point comeback win over GWS and last weekend’s comeback preliminary final win over Geelong.
The Cats victory would have been particularly satisfying for Fagan after Geelong vanquished Brisbane in the 2020 and 2022 preliminary final.
“He backs us in and we back him in,” Rayner said.
Fagan was implicated in Hawthorn’s historic racism scandal, along with former Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson whom he served under as an assistant coach, that first came to light in the week of the 2022 decider.
A drawn-out AFL investigation has since found no adverse findings but there has been no closure, with details of the allegations broadcast in the Federal Court just last month.
Like Lasso not letting the weight of the world drag you down and learning to overcome tough challenges and setbacks was another important Fagan mantra.
“The resilience you saw us play with is a reflection of all that hard work we’ve done over the last eight years,” he said.
“All that resilience helps them (the players) with life because they won’t play football forever.”
With a 2-5 record to start the season and looking nowhere near the team that played in the 2023 grand final, Fagan said any notion they would play in this year’s grand final midway through the season was “crazy”.
He said the team turned around their fortunes after he realised the grand final loss had been “driving us too hard” and “we were trying too hard”.
The 63-year-old rarely rises to the bait when pressed about a poor result or criticism of his coaching. When quizzed over claims the Lions were a tactically poor coached side he simply said he would take such an observation “onboard”.
Fagan was an AFL coach understudy for the best part of two decades, first under Neale Daniher at Melbourne and then he was part of Hawthorn’s golden era under Clarkson.
He first suffered the heartbreak of grand final defeat with the Demons in 2000 but reached the pinnacle of the AFL four times when the Hawks won the flag in 2008 and 2013-15.
“When I played footy, not that I played at any great level. I played in the league down in Tassie but I remember those coaches that made a difference to me and the reasons why they did. I’ve always tried to copy them and take the way they coach onboard,” he told Fox Sports.
“I worked with Neale Daniher for 10 years and Clarko, I learnt a lot of lessons off those guys. All those things help you form your philosophies. I’ve got a teaching background as well and I’ve taught alot kids and I’ve seen what can happen when you take an interest in them.”
The Lions greatest coach Leigh Matthews – who led the club to their historic three-peat from 2001-03 – applauded Fagan’s resolve and, if the Lions triumph, he will be the man to hand Fagan the premiership cup which Matthews held aloft at the MCG 20 years ago.
“The premiership’s the ultimate culmination, we know that,” Matthews said of Brisbane’s journey from cellar dwellers.
Fagan will be the AFL’s oldest coach with a victory on Saturday showing that you are never too old to realise your dream and as Lasso says, “the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
