Five quick hits — AFL's star recruits making preseason impact, Lions send a 2025 warning

Preseason is underway for all 18 AFL clubs with new recruits already making their mark and the reigning champs firing off an early warning.

Here are five quick hits.

1. Wounded Lions driving reigning premiers

A glance at Brisbane's swollen rehabilitation group shows what is driving the Lions' efforts to avoid a fate that has plagued three of the past four AFL premiers who missed finals after winning the flag.

"There's going to be talk about premiership hangovers and everything like that," veteran Lion Dayne Zorko said on Monday. 

"But this group has matured so much over the last six years (of finals campaigns), we've encountered so many scenarios but always come out and improved.

"So we just need to keep improving. We'd love to buck that trend and get back to that day in September again.

"There were a lot of players, stalwarts, who missed out. They have to re-earn their spots in the side, but if they do we want them to experience the same thing.

"Over six years, the hardships and losses … it'd be great to recreate that feeling for them.

"So the guys on the track have to put their case forward. Match sim is going to be interesting, isn't it? I'm pretty excited for it to be honest."

2. Smith to partner Danger in the Cats' engine room

Patrick Dangerfield expects to line up alongside Bailey Smith at the opening bounce of the 2025 AFL season, urging the boom recruit to express himself in a revamped Geelong engine room.

Smith's high-profile trade to the Cats was due in part to his frustration at a lack of opportunity in the Western Bulldogs' high-powered midfield.

But Dangerfield believes that is the position where the versatile 23-year-old will have his strongest impact for Geelong, who take on reigning premiers Brisbane in the season opener on March 6.

"I think he's that inside midfielder and has the ability to break the lines," Dangerfield told reporters on Monday.

"He averages a lot of inside-50s, and I think that will really benefit the group we've got in and around the ball, so that's where I'd see him playing.

"We just want him to be himself, to be honest.

"It's not so much conforming to how we want to play — we want him to play to his strengths and for that to benefit us as a team, so we'll sort of find out what that is over the next two months.

"You have an idea because you see him and you play against him, but it's not until you pull on the guernsey together and you sort of understand the running patterns and where he likes to get the ball and all those sorts of things."

3. Bolton adding X factor to Freo's flag push

Fremantle recruit Shai Bolton is a "unique" weapon who can make his new teammates more dangerous too, says Dockers skipper Alex Pearce.

Former Richmond dynamo Bolton, who returned to Western Australia in the trade period, looms as the missing piece in Fremantle's search for an elusive AFL premiership.

"He's pretty unique in the competition," Pearce said of the 25-year-old on Monday.

"Just his agility and how quick he moves, bit of polish with the ball.

"We've seen that he's a talented player and he can play in the forward line and play in the midfield as well.

"So that's also another good thing to have because our mids like to get forward as well so they can flip with him and hopefully create — they can get dangerous in that way as well."

4. Richards handed special Port Adelaide guernsey

Port Adelaide recruit Joe Richards has described being handed the number 35 jumper as a "huge privilege", bringing it back more than 12 years after former player John McCarthy's death.

McCarthy's playing number was retired after he died in September 2012, aged just 22, from a fall during a post-season trip to Las Vegas.

Richards will wear the number with the blessing of McCarthy's family, having followed the same path as his predecessor from Collingwood to the Power.

"Coming from Collingwood, similar to John, and being traded to Port Adelaide, there's a little connection there," Richards told reporters on Monday.

"There's a bit of history, and obviously Chad Cornes wore it before John.

"So (there's) a little bit of pressure, but I'll try and make it my own and do as much as I can in it."

5. Green looking to lead GWS bid to re-earn respect

Tom Green has vowed GWS will regroup from their AFL finals flop and post-season function scandal, describing their off-season as a "line-in-the-sand moment".

Green was one of the Giants punished in October for their roles in a players' end-of-season function that involved sexist skits and inappropriate costumes.

"Not good enough," he said.

"There's guys who, going into the next season, are going to miss games. It was a real error of judgement on all of our behalf and it's been a real learning curve.

"On and off the field, it's been an off-season where we had to learn a lot and had to get a lot better."

"Just as a leader … inclusive of on the field but also off the field, I'm meant to be setting the example in being a role model.

"In that moment, I failed to do so.

"It's been an off-season of reflection and we've got to get a lot better."

AAP