The spiritual homes of AFL and rugby league in Brisbane are just 4.9km apart yet they may as well be on different planets such are the different orbits of the two sports. As fields of dreams go, the Gabba and Suncorp Stadium are it.

The Brisbane Broncos go about their business as top dog in the city without ever acknowledging a rival footy code even exists. Rugbah league is like that.

Come to think of it, the AFL lives in a silo too. That’s unless the code’s masterminds are handing out free Sherrins and throwing money around to coax their way into Brisbane’s rugby-centric private schools.

The Brisbane Lions launch the 2022 AFL season at the Gabba on Saturday night and the Broncos’ brains trust WILL be paying attention.

That’s because 2021 was one of those years.

The Broncos were awful and the Lions, with their youthful list, proved their substance again by making the finals for the third consecutive season.

The Lions were crowd-pleasers. Even with crowd capacities restricted by Covid-19, they averaged 20,603 fans to each 2021 home game in the regular season. Saturday night is tipped for 27,000. Last year’s club membership record of 40,289 will be broken this year.

There were vacant blocks of seats at Suncorp Stadium when the Broncos were spiraling last year. They averaged just a few hundred more at 21,444 per home game.

The “biggest crowd-pullers in town” tag is one the Broncos treasure.

The Queensland Reds trumped their league cousins for fan-pulling power for the first time in the Broncos’ 25-year history in 2012 when both clubs were drawing over 33,000 fans, on average, to Suncorp Stadium.

Then-Broncos chief executive Paul White was less than amused by headlines like “Union Rules The Roost In Battle For Fans Over Broncos.”

It didn’t take long for league “sources” to offer suggestions that Queensland Rugby Union chief executive Jim Carmichael was counting long-dead ancestors of Life Members in his crowd numbers.  He did add a little mayo to the crowd numbers but the Reds were still booming.

The Broncos are an unbelievably resilient brand. The beauty of the off-season is that it purges any shortcoming of the year before. “Hope” as the new AFL ad goes.

When the Broncos were losing 50-6 to Manly and dealing with four-game losing streaks last year, they were still the black knight guarding the bridge in the old Monty Python And The Holy Grail movie.  “It’s just a flesh wound” could have been the next words out of coach Kevin Walters’ mouth.

Beating grand finalists Souths 11-4 in 2022’s opening round last week instantly restored the equilibrium with a terrific win.

Brisbane is a league town. We know that.

The Broncos already have Wayne Bennett and the freshly-minted Dolphins as turbulence for 2023 when the NRL’s 17th club takes the field. What they don’t need is the Lions grabbing more fans and more of those elusive corporate box hirers who gravitate to successful clubs. Winning nights out are far more fun for friends, family and clients.

A successful Lions team will chip away because players like 246-gamer Daniel Rich have an enduring class over many years that even non-AFL types recognise. The same goes for Dayne Zorko, who you find out was born on the Gold Coast. Or 2020 Brownlow Medallist Lachie Neale. Or Charlie Cameron with the silky moves and knack for goals that sprouted when he was boarding at Marist College Ashgrove.

I’m definitely one of those with a low AFL IQ. Covering Barry Round’s first promotional kick on the Sydney Cricket Ground at the birth of the Swans in 1982 was my last and only milestone in the code. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect the achievements or skills in the game.

Respected former Lions leader Luke Hodge shared a wonderful story of the balance of footy power in Queensland when he arrived from Melbourne to play for the 2018 Lions.

He spoke to a group of eager Queensland kids and one of the first questions thrown his way was: “Have you played with Johnathan Thurston?”

Up next: “Have you scored as many tries?” He took it all with a smile.

It was also rather liberating for Hawthorn’s four-time premiership winner to be able to walk around Brisbane largely unrecognised. Fat chance of that in Melbourne.

After 2017’s wooden spoon, times have changed for the Lions. Heroes have risen where zeroes once failed to register with the Brisbane public. People even know how to pronounce Hugh McCluggage’s name now.

Hosting the AFL grand final at the Gabba in 2020 after a glut of games in Queensland, because of Covid-19, was a one-in-a-hundred-year thing.

There were tall, slender kids not suited to league and small zip-zip types, with ball skills, who saw Aussie Rules as cool for the first time that season. They are still in the under-age ranks so the spin-offs from 2020 are still years away from rising to the surface.

Still, there is nothing surer than a teenage midfielder or ruckman arriving at Lions training in the years ahead. At his first media interview, he’ll say: “Dad took me to the 2020 grand final at the Gabba etc.”  That will be a day to celebrate for the Lions.

Equally, the hosting of the NRL grand final at Suncorp Stadium last year will have planted dreams of league’s grand stage for other youngsters.

Those young rugby unions fans at Suncorp Stadium last May will still remember the noise from more than 41,000 fans when James O’Connor and the Reds delivered the first Super Rugby trophy to Queensland in a decade.

Those highs are essential when Brisbane has more swinging voters than any state capital in the country when it comes to the footy codes. League, AFL, rugby union and football (when the Brisbane Roar were hot in 2011-14) all have the magnetism to shift fans to different seats in Brisbane.

Highs and new heroes are absorbed through every pore by the next generation of players, boys and girls. That sensory hit is lasting.

I still remember watching a friend’s eight-year-old son diving over the tryline, again and again, when he was first allowed onto the Suncorp Stadium turf years ago. He wanted to be a footy player because of the grass. He’d never known a pure carpet of green like it, with such a cushioned landing. He couldn’t get enough of the feeling.

The Broncos might not admit it but they will definitely be taking note of how successfully the Lions launch on Saturday night.

It is the battle for Brisbane that no football club talks about, publicly at least.

Jim Tucker has specialised in sport, the wider impacts and features for most of his 40 years writing in the media. He arrived late for his last AFL game at the Gabba in the bad old days of the Lions in 2016 and thought the game had been delayed. The Lions were 0.0 (0) against Collingwood at quarter-time. His third book, Bulldog! Bulldog! 70 Years of Wests Rugby (2022), is out now.