The 54-year-old is also Brisbane's strategy coach as the club hosts Sydney.

Chris Fagan is starting his fifth year as the Lions' coach, which has seem them play finals the past two seasons.

"The key aspect for us is to keep evolving the leadership group," Stone suggested.

"It's more of the big games, big-game situations and I think the club and group learnt a lot out of the finals series last year."

Brisbane snapped a long drought in claiming its first finals win over Richmond in the first week, but then suffered a 40-point loss to Geelong in the preliminary final.

The Tigers defeated Geelong for their third title in the past four seasons.

Stone's journey to the resurgent Lions has been 22 years in the making.

He took over from the legendary Terry Daniher at Wagga Tigers in 1999, spending two years in the Riverina Football League.

He had another two seasons with South Fremantle, before landing his first AFL appointment at West Coast in 2003.

In a five-year stint, Stone was the assistant to John Worsfold in the thrilling one-point grand final win over Sydney in 2006.

He followed that with four and six seasons at Sydney and Fremantle respectively.

Stone also served under Paul Roos, John Longmire and Ross Lyon.

"Ross used to frequently say in public, it's never as good as you think, it's never as bad as you think," he said.

"As a coach you want to stay in the medium a fair bit, you can't stress yourself out with things that you think are the end of the world and you can't allow groups to get ahead of themselves, if you don't keep them on the right path.

"'Roosy' used to always say never review in an emotional state. Straight after the game be very careful how you address the players and how you wrap the game up."

Stone returned to coaching his own club when he took over SANFL outfit Glenelg in 2018, breaking a 33-year premiership drought the following season.

Through his successful career, Stone's developed a reputation as a stoppage guru.

"The trick is to have a good team system that provides a good balance of offence and defence and a balance on inside and outside support so you're able to generate clearances, whether you win the ball or not," he revealed.

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"That generally stands you in good stead, rather than trying to do things on the run or change things each week."

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