A PERFORMANCE that even coach Craig Starcevich conceded he never saw coming, Ruby Svarc‘s career night of four goals from 13 disposals helped Brisbane power past Carlton to reach a fourth straight AFL Women’s Grand Final.

The Blues lead their preliminary final early, before Brisbane answered through the second term thank to hard work and tackling pressure. A six goals to one third quarter broke the game open and essentially handed the Lions the win, before Brisbane finished off to come away with the 10.7 (67) to 5.2 (32) victory over Carlton.

When asked at his post-match press conference if he saw Svarc’s incredible performance coming, even Starcevich was still in a little bit of shock.

“No is the short answer, though that’s a bit harsh on Ruby as she’s one of the hardest workers in our group perfecting her craft,” he said. “She’s always been the lightning fast athlete and has picked up the game over the last four or five years and gets better and better and if you had of asked me four years ago when she’d just jumped on my list that she’d have a night where she’d kicked four in a prelim, you could name your odds.

“That was amazing, but its sort of surprising, but not that surprising if you break it down, because Ruby’s such a hard worker.”

While Svarc is not often the headliner amongst a stacked Lions front half, Starcevich said her teammates would have been “rapt” with her show-stopping performance.

“I’d be surprised if they weren’t absolutely thrilled for Rubes because they know what she’s been through,” he said. “She sat there in ’21 when we won our first flag and now she gets another chance to go to the grand final and put her stamp on it. That game tonight was superb.”

The team as a whole picked a good time to step up, with the premiership quarter proving to be the term where the Lions kept that ambition alive for the 2025 season. Starcevich described the performance as “awesome” and highlighted the six-goal third quarter.

“We haven’t had many six-goal quarters in our history so to pull that one out now the way that we did, but it was probably on the back of the dam wall bursting a little bit,” he said. “Our work and pressure in the first half was pretty good it was just a matter of time whether we could get some scoreboard ascendancy from it.”

There was much anticipation into the match when Carlton’s Sophie McKay made post-game comments after her side’s semi-final win over Hawthorn that the Blues were “coming for you” to Starcevich. The Lions coach said he enjoyed the comments and encouraged there to be more of it.

“The girls have been talking about it and that was probably last weekend but I think Sophie’s great for the game,” Starcevich said. “That sort of stuff about not being phased about who you’re playing or what state you’re going to to get it done, it’s fantastic for our game and fantastic for AFLW. The more Sophie McKays in the comp the better I think.

“I don’t think its contrived. “I think Sophie was genuine that they’d been playing really, really good footy so good on them. She’s such a good player and exuberant star of the comp, she’s going to be a great player but if she has that energy she’s going to bring people to the game so that’s important for us.”

Now Brisbane sets its sights on the rampaging North Melbourne with the two sides facing off in a third straight decider. Starcevich said he was looking forward to challenging the Roos on the biggest stage once again.

“Yeah one-all at the moment so we’re both there, they’ve got the amazing run, we’re also on a bit of a run at the moment so we’re really looking for to it because the type of footy we’ve been playing can challenge anyone,” he said.

“We’ve had our few bumps early in the year when we were trying to get a few things organised. None of its been perfect but its just great that we’ve been able to get this run going and we’ve been able to drip feed what we’ve been talking about into their game when they need it.”