LIONS FIND THEIR ROAR IN HISTORIC GRAND FINAL
Saints eye clean sweep of AFL Cairns premierships
THE Cairns City Lions are on the verge of something special.
Four years ago, the AFL Cairns club was teetering on the brink of survival following a mass player exodus, but on Saturday, it plays its first grand final in 27 years.
The dark days have outweighed the positive ones at Holloways Beach Sporting Complex since Cairns City adopted the ‘Lions’ moniker a decade ago, when Cairns City’s Cobras, in need of juniors, and Redlynch Lions, in need of a seniors, merged.
Cairns City Lions’ struggles in their early years were no secret – they failed to win a game in their inaugural campaign, and went on to win just four games over the next two seasons.
They found their competitive edge in 2014, winning six games in what was the first of three straight seasons of fifth-placed finishes for the club.
But just as the Lions were beginning to find some consistency on the field – and kicking goals off it, including wiping away about $100,000 in debt and owning and running the sports club at Holloways Beach – things took a turn for the worse.
It started when the club held crisis meetings after sacking player-coach Aaron McNab just weeks out from the 2017 season, following a mass player walkout to rival clubs and poor numbers at pre-season training.
Cairns City Lions could only field one side that year, dropping out of the reserves competition, and were in a constant battle to put 22 players on the park each week as 200-point drubbings became the norm.
There were concerns whether the Lions would even make it through the 2017 season at times, the situation was so dire at Holloways Beach.
And if it wasn’t for Cairns City stalwart Robbie Taranto, who returned to help spearhead the Lions’ revival alongside outgoing president Wayne Keygan, the club might have fallen by the wayside completely.
“It was looking pretty touch and go for a while there,” Taranto said.
“We only had one team and basically had to get as many players and people to put on the jumper as we could, it was pretty tough.
“We had 15-year-olds and we had 55-year-olds playing; everyone put on a jumper to try and save the club.”
It was later that year the Lions recruited former Melbourne Demons star Aaron “Flash” Davey to lead the club for the next two seasons – a move which has had as massive impact on the Lions’ growth, with Davey about to finish a fourth season at the helm.
In his first interview with the Cairns Post in 2017, Davey was asked how he would deal with the tag of Cairns City Lions’ “saviour”.
“I do not know about saviour but there will be a fair bit of pressure,” he said in September 2017.
“I am here to try and help the club get back to where it wants to be.”
At the time, Taranto said he hoped Davey’s recruitment would prove a turning point in the club’s
history.
“If we can look back on this moment in 10 years’ time and say we changed the club around with this move, that is the aim,” Taranto said in September 2017.
While it didn’t take as long as Taranto
first expected, Davey has made good on his promise four years later.
“When Flash got up here, we started to get some quality people around the club and really change the culture, that was our main goal,” Taranto said.
“We actually had a list up on the board at the club, which I think got rubbed off at the start of this year, but it said we wanted to play finals in 2020 – and we played in 2019 and 2020 – and we wanted to play in a grand final in 2021.
“It was very ambitious but the plan’s worked, I guess.”
Taranto said Saturday’s grand final appearance would be a special moment for the club’s faithful.
“That was one of the messages we gave to the boys,” he said.
“They’re not only representing themselves, but anybody that’s put on a jumper or supported the club during the tough times.
“There was a few tears shed over the last week, just with where we’ve come from and how much it means to those people that did it hard.”
The Lions will be out to break a 38year premiership drought on Saturday, with the last time a Cairns City side won the flag back in 1983, when the club, then known as City United, claimed back-to-back titles in what remains its only two premierships.
Current president Shane Law, who took over from Taranto in 2019, said a return to the grand final was an exciting prospect for the club.
“It’s something that we’ve been working very hard at, especially since Aaron turned up, and it’s great we’ve been able to get there,” he said.
Law thanked Davey for his commitment to the club, saying he did not need much persuading to stay at the club after his initial two-year deal.
“Aaron’s a very loyal character,” Law said.
“I do know he’s received offers from other clubs in the league and he’s stood firm with us and has said Cairns City Lions is his family club, just like Palmerston is his family club back in Darwin.
“He’s had a history of being involved with clubs that have struggled for success, even at the highest level.”
Law, who moved to Cairns in 2015, said a win on Saturday would be for anyone who had been involved in the club since it was first established as City United in 1969.
“There’s a lot of people that have been involved in the club a lot longer than me that it means a hell of a lot to, that have been through long periods of tough times,” he said.
“I also want to make mention of the people that stuck by the club in 2017 and ensured it continued.
“If they didn’t do what they did, we not only probably wouldn’t be where we are today, we wouldn’t exist at all.
“They kept the club going and enabled us to come along and get it to where it is today.”
He said a highlight of this weekend was the number of players from the club’s tumultuous 2017 season lining up in the grand final, including Liam Woodcock-Nowlan, Brandon Lovell, Jay Frankland, Mitchell Hunter, Brenden Deslandes, Sam and Tom Lindenmayer, and Nicholas and Patrick Johnson.
“Some people look at our top-level recruits that we get from elsewhere and seem to forget that we have 10 blokes that have come through our junior program at any time,” Law said.
“What Aaron’s done with those guys to not only improve their football but to get them to embrace what being a successful footballer entails has just been fantastic.”
Davey was only three months old when the club won its last flag in 1983, and 11 when it last made the grand final in 1994.
“I would have been up in Darwin with my brother Alwyn and my cousins kicking a footy – or Coke bottles, stubby coolers, anything that was shaped like a footy,” Davey said.
He said playing in the club’s first grand final in almost three decades was about more than the 22 players on the field.
“It’s not about us, it’s about everyone that can’t be out there – players, officials, support staff, our ressies, women’s, juniors, our supporters – we’re on this journey together.”
... Everyone put on a jumper to try and save the club.” Former Cairns City Lions president Robbie Taranto