Luke Hodge

They couldn't commit to my check, even though their biggest weakness this year has been their forward line, and they couldn't commit to my check because of the funds that Melbourne were offering him.

Whether they were leading some money there for King to come back to, Colin, because that was touted that he'd been speaking to them as well.

So it did scratch my head at their age...

And where they are list-wise, as good as Lockie Neal is, I don't think he'll get them straight back into a top four contender.

But who knows?

Obviously, they like what he's seen.

And everyone's liked what they've seen from Lockie this year.

His season so far has been as good as any.

How I saw them play on Saturday afternoon was exactly that.

It was classy, it was clinical.

Every player to a man knew exactly what they had to do and they could have been overruled.

You're going across to a venue that you've not won since 2016.

You're up and about.

The Lions have got a lot of injuries, but you couldn't tell that from the way they played.

And it was just a class performance from them.

What I do like is there's a balanced lineup through the whole field.

And you sort of look through and go, the last part for me was getting their forwards to be consistent.

I think that was big.

Because you sort of look at them and you had the Tracy, you had the Amish, you had the Voss.

But they were all really young.