🦁 EXCLUSIVE | Dayne Zorko is a Lion for One More Year!

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
Lions take on the Crows tomorrow night, do or die at the Gabba. 7.30, hey, say it with me.

**Dayne Zorko** (0:11)
One more year.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:12)
Oh, oh, yeah. One more year. I'm gonna say.

**Dayne Zorko** (0:15)
One more year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:17)
He signed yesterday, Zorks.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:19)
Oh, sorry, oh, I thought you meant the premiership.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:21)
No way.

**Dayne Zorko** (0:22)
Zorko signed another year. Yeah, one game at a time, one game at a time. I thought it was back.
Zorko, Zorko. I'm just helping you out. Sorry, resigning Zorks.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:29)
Yay. Come here, Zorko.

**Dayne Zorko** (0:31)
Thank you.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:32)
Sorry.

**Dayne Zorko** (0:32)
Thank you, Jane.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:33)
Fully blown argument there. I thought he was.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:37)
No, for the Zorkos.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:38)
Going the early Crow and Crow being the operative word because we've got the Adelaide Crows, of course. Tomorrow night, mate, do or die. Semi-final, 7.35 is when it all starts. You can watch it on 7, Fox 40 and KO. But well, this is it now, mate. You got to win from here on in.

**Dayne Zorko** (0:55)
Yeah, exactly right. Seems to be the space where we do our best work.
Hopefully we can continue that trend tomorrow night. But yeah, it's going to be a tough opposition. They got the monkey off their back from their finals drought. I think it was over 20 years or something like that since their last finals win. So, yeah, it's going to be difficult. But yeah, we just need to play better than last week. There's no there's no ifs or buts about it. We were prosthetic last week and we got our little review meeting in our bank and hopefully on to this week in a better result.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:27)
I always get nervous talking to athletes this close to a competition.
Because I really want to know stuff that then might take you out of your headspace. For example, when do you start getting nervous for the game? Can you hold it off until you get to the actual ground or do you get spates of it from now?

**Dayne Zorko** (1:45)
Nah, I'm all right today. Tomorrow morning, waking up, the butterflies kick in a little bit.
And I think it's still good. My ripe old age of 37, I still get them, which is nice. So yeah, it just sort of locks you in a little bit more. And you start thinking about, you know, more so what you need to do for the game. But at the same time, you don't want to overthink it. So it's a real challenge, especially playing so late at night. 7.35. It is a long day with a young family. It gets you up at about a quarter to six. It does turn into a long day. So I'll have to have a nap tomorrow at some point. But yeah, the nerves are still there, which is great.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:19)
And you probably already had three coffees by 9am.

**Dayne Zorko** (2:23)
Yeah, then half an hour before the game, a couple of red bulls and we're up till 4am the next day. So yeah, that's great.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:30)
Does a family go out and leave you in peace at home?

**Dayne Zorko** (2:33)
Yeah, my wife's really good at making sure that our four year old is not... Oh, she can be a troublemaker, but yeah, she doesn't annoy us too much, which is good. But it's also nice getting out with them and taking your mind off it and going to the park or going to the shops or whatever. You try and keep as similar a routine as you possibly can, but also understand you don't want to burn too much energy and that balance is tricky at times.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:58)
So particularly off the back of last week, Zorks, what were the key messages? What are you taking in or the key buzzwords or phrases are you taking into this week or tomorrow?

**Dayne Zorko** (3:08)
Well, probably important we show up.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:12)
I love that simplicity.

**Dayne Zorko** (3:13)
Didn't tell it last week. Just the intensity wasn't there early, was it?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:16)
It's like the swans just had...

**Dayne Zorko** (3:17)
Reflected.
Very disappointing on that. I mean, it's a big final. We knew it was at stake. Mentioned on the show like a home prelim final. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a carrot to dangle in front of you, but we just probably expected it to happen. And there was a lot of noise around the game and we just bought into it, I think, subconsciously, whether anyone meant to do it or not. We'll never know, but our intensity wasn't there from the very first bounce. So there's going to be a massive shift in that department tomorrow night. We've worked really hard on a couple of key areas defensively throughout the week that we need to clean up, especially against the side like Adelaide, we've got a lot of big key forwards that can put a score on us as well. So yeah, there was a few things there that we needed to tidy up. But if our energy and our antenna isn't there to tackle and defend and pressure, it's going to be a long night for us again. So we're aware of what we need to bring.