The Brisbane Lions under coach Chris Fagan have completed a three-peat, winning the AFL grand final in 2024, 2025 and 2026, as depicted in an image showing the coach and co-captains Josh Dunkley, Harris Andrews and Hugh McCluggage with the three premiership cups.
In an opinion piece published by the Brisbane Times and Sydney Morning Herald, chief football writer Jake Niall notes that it is a strange quirk of the 21st century AFL that three teams have achieved what the equalised system is supposed to prevent and taken three premierships consecutively.
Niall observes that when the Brisbane Lions team coached by Leigh Matthews won the 2003 grand final, demolishing a much less talented Collingwood team, they were the first club since the 1950s Melbourne side to complete what became known as the three-peat. That Melbourne team played before colour television in a quasi-amateur sport in a Victorian-only competition.
Geelong of 2007-2011 had the capacity to equal that record, but stumbled in 2008 on grand final day and in 2010 when their game style was overtaken and hunger waned, and they did not make the grand final. Hawthorn, a beneficiary of the AFL's expansion, would be the next three-peater under Alastair Clarkson, their super team claiming the 2013, 2014 and 2015 flags against a treble of non-Victorian opponents.