Brisbane co-captain Luke Power says the Lions must face up to "the dirty R-word - rebuild".
But after dropping out of the AFL finals race, the last thing the Lions need is to go into next season without their champion centre half-forward Jonathan Brown.
The triple-premiership big man was goal-less in Saturday night's embarrassing 17.12 (114) to 6.17 (53) loss to the Swans at the SCG but has shown his class with a 70-goal season despite niggling injuries.
Out of contract and yet to commit to Brisbane for 2009, the 26-year-old South Warrnambool product is being wooed by Victorian clubs and Power is understandably keen to see Brown stay put.
"You hope so. Browny is a great player," Power said after gathering 20 possessions against the Swans.
"He's in the top five players in the competition and they don't come around every day so if you've got them, you've got to keep them.
"Hopefully Browny stays with the club. It's purely his decision and I respect whatever decision he makes.
"But obviously from a fellow captain's point of view of course we hope he stays."
Reports of a rift between Brown and coach Leigh Matthews have been denied by the club and Matthews says he hopes Brown re-signs quickly.
"Me personally and the club would have liked the issue to have been put to bed three months ago," Matthews said.
Power said the playing group would find it depressing to watch the finals next weekend on television.
"I'm disappointed. There's probably five games that we could have won and the way results have gone, we possibly could have had a top-four finish," the onballer said.
"Now we've finished 10th and I guess we've got to rebuild, the dirty R-word - rebuild.
"I think we've got the personnel. I think you are always rebuilding or always building.
"Maybe building is a better word.
"You can only have a relax, get away from it and hopefully train our arses off and put ourselves up there for a chance to have a crack next year.
"We didn't really play with much pride. Sydney blew us away a bit and they were undermanned and that made it even worse.
"We were good enough to be in the eight. There was a lot of good signs to come out of the year. We blooded a lot of blokes and that sort of stuff.
"We'll watch finals next week and we'll get sad about it or depressed.
"It can drive you or it can make you despondent and hopefully it will drive most of the group."
