Playing to win: Chirpy Zorko is footy’s agent provocateur

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During Dayne Zorko’s first season with the Brisbane Lions, club legend and skipper Jonathan Brown told the then 23-year-old midfielder to keep a “chip on his shoulder” about having been overlooked in four consecutive drafts.

The recruiting snub fuelled the four-time Broadbeach best and fairest through the early part of his career as he gradually emerged as a Lions star, earning All-Australian honours in 2017, midway through a patch of consecutive best-and-fairest awards that now sits at five.

Feisty Brisbane Lions veteran Dayne Zorko is never afraid to liven up a game.Credit: AFL Photos

Then Chris Fagan arrived as coach in 2017 and the source of Zorko’s motivation switched from proving other clubs wrong to making sure his club was right.

“Since ‘Fages’ [Fagan] came to the club I have really tried to give myself over to the team as much as possible,” Zorko said.

That mindset has improved the whimpering Lions as he helped them surge back into premiership contention after being made captain in 2019, having served on an interim basis from midway through 2018.

As an experienced player, his role broadened to ensure the club became a place that young people could make their own and flourish, even if the scoreboard wasn’t always flash.

“[We] tried to make the environment as fun as we possibly could. We tried to not put rules and stuff around the players and what they can do,” Zorko said.

Soon enough, players wanted to join the Lions and those who were drafted stayed, with Zorko one of the constants – along with Ryan Lester (who is also his brother-in-law) and the recently retired Daniel Rich – in the transition.

But during that period, another side of the veteran became more apparent to those watching too, as the leader of an emerging team appeared in prime time.

He often appealed his case to umpires with outstretched arms. He refused to take a backward step at stoppages. He spoke out of turn. He found himself in trouble with the match review officer more than most.

To many, his comments on radio this season that led to Gold Coast opponent Touk Miller being suspended for conduct unbecoming merely reflected his general approach, although they created unwanted drama.

And, as a result he became a player who, despite his enormous ability, infuriated rival fans. Opposition clubs recognised that he played on emotion, his mood changing if the Lions were losing. His reputation shifted, fairly or not, from being mostly seen as a talkative, exuberant player to a stirrer at best, and a provocateur at worst, one of football’s shock jocks.

Zorko rejects the notion that talking underpins his game, but he does admit that sometimes as the captain – a position he relinquished at the start of this season – he had felt a need to change the game’s direction. And his best method to do that was to use his voice.

“[I] wouldn’t say talking drives my performance, but I would say I don’t like losing, and I reckon you are in the wrong game if you like losing,” Zorko said.

Chris Fagan helped Dayne Zorko to use helping the team as his motivationCredit: Getty

“One thing you do realise as an older player is that you understand when things in your game plan or throughout a game aren’t going your way, so you are always looking for a way you can wrestle back momentum for your team.

“That has probably got me into trouble a number of times trying to do that and trying to swing back momentum, but I am not sure [that] I would change too much of it because I am only doing it to try to help my team win.

“Don’t get me wrong. It looks quite demonstrative out on the field, but that is just the way I have known how to do it. Sometimes it will work and nothing will ever get said about it and when it doesn’t work it certainly gets brought up.”

Zorko also has a view that beyond laying a big tackle or making a smother, his stature doesn’t allow him to impose himself in a physical manner as others might. His response is to become chirpy.

Dayne Zorko doesn’t mind making his presence felt on the footy field.Credit: Getty Images

“Verbally you try and generate some sort of enthusiasm and motivation for your boys to follow you, and being captain, that is your job to keep your players motivated and keep their eyes on the prize to some extent,” Zorko said.

As coach, Fagan can be emotional and is a fierce competitor too, but he has a conservative approach when it comes to interaction with opponents.

Zorko, a bricklayer before being drafted, has appreciated that Fagan has balanced unwavering support with wise counsel when needed.

“His feedback to me has been at times [that] you certainly do need to rein it in, or you have to allow other people to step up in these moments as well, [saying] ‘Don’t always think it has to be up to you’,” Zorko said.

“This year it has been a little – not easier for me – but a nice relief knowing I don’t have to be that person unless I feel we are just not getting it from anywhere else.

“He understands that I am an emotional player and do play on the edge, but he knows I would do anything for the club and anything to make us try to win, and I think that is the same way he sees it.”

Fagan absolutely understands Zorko’s talent, his piercing right foot and ability to dance through traffic like a fundraiser collecting money at a red light able to break open contested games. He also knows all about his emotion.

Harnessing that is critical to the Lions’ premiership aspirations, as the durable Zorko nudges 35, with his versatility, energy and experience complementing his more youthful teammates.

The chip might have disappeared off Zorko’s shoulder, but the AFL Media Guide’s description of him in 2012 as a “terrier with his defensive pressure” remains relevant.

Zorko laughs at the description, saying those at Broadbeach, such as Gary Fox and Matt Angus, who he credits with getting him on track for an AFL career, wouldn’t have thought defence was high on his agenda.

But he knows “terrier” isn’t far from the truth, even though his bark has always been way worse than his bite, according to those who know him best at the Lions.

This is a finals series that could determine forever how his remarkable career is remembered. If all goes according to plan he’d play his 250th in the grand final.

Five best and fairests, captain, All-Australian, 250 games. A premiership would round off the resume nicely.

“I am not getting any younger, so time is certainly running out as to how many more finals games I play and whether I get the opportunity to get to a grand final,” Zorko said.

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