Can last year's AFL grand finalists address their early season woes?

But there it was last Sunday, new territory established, even if for Collingwood and Brisbane it was unwanted territory.

The Pies and Lions became the first grand finalists to both lose their first two games of the following year.

Superficially, that seems a bit of a shock given how good both sides were in that epic grand final playoff last year.

Consider all the details, however, and it's probably more just another reminder of how wafer-thin the gap is between most AFL teams these days.

Collingwood started the season away up against a GWS side it had only beaten by one point to reach the grand final.

And Sydney, which made short work of the Pies last Friday night, was a finalist last year and a very popular tip in 2024 to push hard for the top four.

Brisbane met fellow preliminary finalist Carlton, then took the longest flight in football to Perth to play Fremantle.

It's still early days, and since last year, there's 23 rather than just 22 games for each team to mount a finals charge.

There's another statistic, though, that might trouble Collingwood and Brisbane as much as that 0-2 scoreline.

It's that since 2000, only 20 of the 114 teams which have made an 0-2 start to a season have gone on to play finals. That's a lowly 17.5 per cent.

Of those 20, none have won a premiership, and indeed only three have even reached a grand final.

Clearly, there's challenges ahead for respective coaches Craig McRae and Chris Fagan, as much about diagnosing as treating the issues.

Fagan, for example, would have been pretty happy with his charges approaching half-time of Brisbane's opener against Carlton when the Lions led by a whopping 46 points.

But, not for the first time with the Lions, their failure to nail all their chances late in the first half left the door ever so slightly ajar, and the Blues snatched an amazing one-point win.

As close as the Lions came to last year's flag, their lack of steadiness on field and tendency to stick to the same methods even in changed circumstances still attracts plenty of criticism.

"When things get bad for them, they can't dig themselves out of a hole," experienced former coach Rodney Eade observed last week on the Footyology podcast.

This season, Brisbane has outscored Carlton and Fremantle by 11 goals to four in the first quarter, but not been able to arrest the slide thereafter, conceding 23 goals to 11 in six subsequent quarters.

Injuries are mounting in the Lions' defensive half, too, with Darcy Gardiner and Conor McKenna now joining the critical Keidean Coleman on the casualty list.

Brisbane has a bye this weekend, with 12 days separating the Fremantle loss and the next assignment against Collingwood on Good Friday eve.

You suspect even this early in the season, the mini-break will come in handy as Fagan attempts to nip any slump in the bud.

Collingwood, meanwhile, won't have had the same luxury, facing another tricky assignment on Thursday evening this week against a St Kilda team which almost knocked over Geelong at its intimidating home patch.

For premiership coach McRae, the judgements on his team this week will be largely about how much of the malaise is due to game style and personnel issues, and how much down simply to last year's levels of motivation not yet having been matched this season.

Collingwood conceded 78 points on turnover to Sydney last Friday night, almost double what it conceded in 2023.

The absence of key defender Nathan Murphy has impacted heavily, making Darcy Moore more accountable and increasing pressure also on other defenders like Isaac Quaynor.

The Pies, normally with the sharpest disposal skills in the competition, were very sloppy against the Swans, and seemed also to take more risks going inboard behind centre.

These are technical issues which, as McRae noted after the game, should be an easy enough fix.

But might it also be argued that the higher rate of errors is because more Magpies aren't switched on to the level they were when the flag chase was on in 2023?

And is the relatively subdued performances by some of Collingwood's oldest players another warning sign that perhaps appetites have finally been sated?

McRae can't possibly establish the definitive answer this early.

But he knows the possibility is real, and has been reading up plenty on methods to nip such complacency in the bud.

For both he and Fagan, finding the antedote is also a race against time.

Because if the success rate of teams starting new seasons 0-2 is low enough, neither would want to glimpse the numbers for teams which start 0-3 or 0-4.