29th September 2025
My Team Lost the Grand Final
Eight lessons we can learn from losing
My team, the Geelong Cats, were defeated by the Brisbane Lions in the 2025 AFL Grand Final on Saturday. The scoreboard hurts. 18.14 (122) to 11.9 (75), a 47‑point gap. Scores were level at half‑time, then, the second half felt like a slow unravelling as Brisbane’s pressure, and moments of brilliance, broke the game open.
I work with leaders and teams, so after taking a day to reflect on the game, I’ve drawn out eight lessons from the loss that could apply to any leadership group or team.
Lesson One: Own the reality before you try to fix it.
Post‑match, Cats Captain, Patrick Dangerfield did not reach for cover. He rejected the injury alibi, he called the game what it was, ruthless, and fronted the result, no excuses.
When a captain (leader) carries that posture, the rest of the team knows exactly where to look next, inward first, then outward. In high‑stakes work, there is a temptation to sanitise the truth to preserve morale, but clarity creates energy, excuses drain it.
Lesson Two: Decisions are made in fog, design for fog.
Coach Chris Scott walked through the Cameron substitution dilemma in plain language, uncertainty about the injury, uncertainty about the rule, uncertainty about downstream risks, all in the heat of a Grand Final. His post-match comments will stick with me; he will be thinking about those calls at 3am.
That is the point, your decision architecture must assume imperfect information, compressed time and conflicting risks, otherwise the structure breaks just when you need it. Consider your critical‑event rules, escalation thresholds and technical (or medical) governance in the same breath, they either help the coach (leader) decide, or they slow the team.
Lesson Three: Rules shape behaviour more than pep talks do.
Scott’s critique of the sub rule was not theatre, it was an operational critique, the rule distorted decision timing and risk appetite at the exact moment leadership needed clean lines.
Leaders often inherit rules that once made sense, now they create friction. As a leader your job after a loss is to distinguish between performance issues and system issues. Fix the system issues first because they multiply or mute performance everywhere.
Lesson Four: Courage is specific.
Jeremy Cameron kept playing with what team‑mates feared was a broken arm, Dangerfield said he heard a snap, and Cameron still executed a one‑armed chase‑down of an opponent that sparked a Cats goal.
You do not ask for that as a leader, but you do honour it, and you translate it. “This is what commitment looks like”. In corporate settings, courage is not a slogan, it is a named behaviour, taking heat for a call, fronting a client, telling the board the thing nobody wants to hear. Name it, or your culture will romanticise effort and forget outcomes.
Lesson Five: Channel hurt into standards, not slogans.
Mark Blicavs spoke about regrouping and going again, embracing the hurt. That is a standard, a behavioural expectation that turns an emotional state into repeatable action.
After any strategic loss, leaders should run a two‑track response. One track for feelings, let people process. Another for craft. What exactly will we do differently on contest, structure, decision cadence, and role clarity. The former respects people, the latter respects performance.
Lesson Six: Moments win finals, prepare to create them.
The match hinged on momentum swings and a series of moments after half‑time, Brisbane created more of them, repeatedly.
In organisations we often prepare for the steady state and under‑prepare for moments; that one investor question, that one Go-No Go meeting, that one incident escalation at 2am. Train for moments with pressure drills, time‑boxed decisions, red‑team reviews and pre‑mortems, then reward people who execute when the air is thin.
Lesson Seven: Parity is a lie; edges live in the details.
At half‑time the game was statistically even, disposals, kicks, handballs, entries, clearances, yet the second half diverged sharply.
Leaders should avoid the comfort of averages. Dashboards can hide structural vulnerabilities, match‑ups, fatigue profiles, decision latency, and role misalignments. Your review must go below the surface of the metrics to the mechanisms that produce them.
Lesson Eight: Leadership is visible when it hurts.
The Cats Captain, the Coach, the senior players faced the cameras and told the truth about their performance. That is the part the outside world sees, but it teaches the inside world what leadership looks like when you miss.
If you lead a team, do not waste your next defeat. Stand up, strip away the euphemisms, and give your people a way to convert pain into practice.
A Final Thought.
Grand Finals compress years of work into a few hours and losing one can feel like a verdict on who you are. It is not. It is a verdict on how you played one game against an excellent opponent on a particular day.
The lessons are from the AFL 2025 Grand Final are clear, and they are actionable; own reality, design for fog, tune the rules, name courage, turn hurt into standards, train for moments, look past parity, make leadership visible.
That hard swing from parity to pain is the first leadership lesson in defeat. Momentum is both fragile and decisive, so build for it, protect it, and when you lose it, respond faster than feels comfortable.
And now we go again. Go Cats!
Justin Miles
Categories: Uncategorised
