Star Brisbane veteran Dayne Zorko insists the Lions can complete a historic three-peat even if Lachie Neale isn't cleared to play in the grand final.
Neale and the Lions are going to the AFL appeals board on Thursday in an attempt to overturn a one-game suspension for a gut punch on Hawthorn's Jack Ginnivan.
The dual Brownlow Medal winner was unable to clear his name at the tribunal on Tuesday, despite having not previously been suspended in his glittering 320-game career.
The exceptional and compelling circumstances clause was used to downgrade a one-game ban to Collingwood legend and AFL games record-holder Scott Pendlebury earlier this year.
If he doesn't succeed in his appeal, Neale will likely have played his final game for Brisbane, because he appears certain to switch to Collingwood on a lucrative three-year deal in the off-season.
Although Neale produced a memorable cameo when he was subbed into last year's grand final at the start of the third quarter, the Lions still won two finals without him when he was out with a calf injury.
"We can't get carried away about it just being a Lachie Neale team," Zorko said at Melbourne Airport on Wednesday.
"We're the Brisbane Lions, we've got a lot of players on our list and we played a few finals last year without him as well.
"We're not going to get distracted by that, it's not our business to get distracted by it."
Zorko stressed he would love to have Neale in the team, but said the Lions would train as normal in Melbourne on Thursday ahead of the club's fourth consecutive grand final on Saturday.
"We'd love him to be out there," Zorko said.
"We hope he's out there, but if he's not, our next-man-up mentality is going to come into play."
To succeed at an appeals board hearing on Thursday at 4pm (AEST), Brisbane will have to prove the tribunal finding was either an error of law, an unreasonable decision, a manifestly excessive classification, or a manifestly excessive sanction.
"There's been 10 (gut-punch) incidents this year, all of them have resulted in a week (suspension)," the AFL's footy boss Greg Swann told reporters on Wednesday.
Neale is facing the possibility of being the first player to miss an AFL grand final through suspension since Collingwood's Anthony Rocca in 2003.
Sydney's Barry Hall (2005) and Richmond's Trent Cotchin (2017) famously escaped bans for incidents in their respective preliminary finals to play in eventual premiership wins.
