THE Brisbane Lions have confirmed that they will take a four-headed captaincy structure into season 2008.

Jonathan Brown, Luke Power, Simon Black and Nigel Lappin will lead the Lions this season. That quartet shared the role with Chris Johnson in 2007, however Johnson’s off-season retirement to join the club’s coaching staff reduces the captaincy group by one.

Senior coach Leigh Matthews saw no reason to radically alter the shared captaincy approach, nor introduce a replacement for Johnson. However, Matthews explained that there will be a subtle change in the team leaders’ week-to-week responsibilities.

“Prior to 2007 we decided that a multiple co-captains model would be preferred to the singular captaincy system and it worked really well in practice, so this model will continue in 2008,” Matthews said.

“The one slight alteration going forward is that rather than the four sharing the captaincy functions each week, one of the four will perform all the captaincy duties during each particular match.”

At 31, Lappin is the senior member of the group, all of whom played in the club’s memorable triple premiership run (2001-03); Power and Black are 28, Brown the “junior” at 26. The four have collectively compiled five club champion awards, nine All-Australian honors and 821 games.