Brisbane look set to make moves via this year's trade and free agency mechanisms in the hope of bolstering their attacking ranks following the retirement of premiership forward Joe Daniher.
Daniher was nothing short of a mercurial player. He made the unbelievable believable. He was an entertainer, a spectacle unto himself and, most importantly for the Brisbane Lions, their most compelling forward.
Not many AFL clubs employ a player capable of taking the opposing team's best defender and playing second ruck in the same game. Nor do they employ one that could guarantee you a barrage of goals in any given season and take that form through to the biggest stages of the AFL season.
That's why the gaping chasm left in Daniher's retirement is something the Lions will need to address promptly. 2025 is the year of the stop-gap acquisition; Sam Day. Day has been a serviceable AFL player for a long time, but no one is suggesting he will be able to replicate even half of what Daniher was able to provide.
Same can be said for Brandon Ryan, who Brisbane acquired in the trade that sent Jack Gunston back to the Hawks in 2023.
With that in mind, Brisbane will be in the market to poach a big-name forward to play alongside Eric Hipwood and the budding Logan Morris for 2026 onwards.Â
Here we name four players out of contract at the end of 2025 who Brisbane should be in the market for at the end of this season, starting with West Coast co-captain Oscar Allen following recent trade links to the Lions.
3. Tom Lynch
Check back with us in a few months time to make sure Father Time hasn't successfully defeated Tom Lynch just yet. If he hasn't, this could be the sort of low-risk high-reward move that favours the bold.
The bolstering forward hasn't been able to get his body right in the past couple of years, but he has he has shown himself to be a one man army in the forward line.
Capable of ragdolling any defender and imposing his will on a game, he possesses all the tools to reshape Brisbane's forward line and free up Hipwood.
Unfortunately at his ripe old age of 32, the Dandenong Stingrays product shouldn't be asked to attend any ruck contests. Could Brisbane be swayed to test Hipwood or Morris and leave Lynch alone in the forward 50 instead?
