Brisbane Lions CEO Greg Swann has moved quickly to hose down concerns about the club considering having a real lion as part of the pre-match entertainment.

Here’s his statement:

Today, an imaginary lion being potentially upset by some imaginary crowd upset a bunch of hippies.

I think that was the general gist of it.

For some reason, they all assumed a lion wouldn’t want to parade around in front of a crowd.

I bet none of them have even met a lion. I at least illegally own a lion.

Sure, it’s locked up in a small cage in the backyard, but I’ve at least got a vague idea of what it likes.

To be frank, if I want a lion roaming free on the Gabba, I’m going to get me a lion.

At Carlton, I couldn’t really have anything that exciting. Can’t really entertain people with the colour blue.

We tried to entertain them with the footy but that didn’t work at all.

Collingwood was not much better. Who cares if you see a bloody magpie? You see one of them walking to the train station in the morning.

They tried a ‘hip-hop dance troop’ after I left, but that was crueler than this lion idea.

The thing about the lion is it wasn’t even a plan it was just a vague idea.

It wasn’t even my idea.

The cleaner was in my office last night and said ‘you should have a real lion before games.’

I don’t even think the guy was sober. You should have heard some of his other ideas.

One was to have the lion come out at halftime during Auskick. Can you imagine?

Lucky I didn’t mention that bit. I would have had the animal activists and the child protection people after me.

Anyway, we all know we’re not doing the lion bit now.

I just didn’t want to rule it out completely just because almost everyone got angry.

So, it’s back to the drawing board I guess.

Do people like school kids forming giant patterns with ribbons and big pieces of fabric?

There’s going to be a lot of that now.