Brisbane coach Chris Fagan has instructed his less-experienced playing group to narrow their focus and play without fear in the AFL preliminary final against Geelong.

The Lions line up at the Gabba on Saturday night with just four players who have previously featured this deep into a season.

Grant Birchall, Lachie Neale, Charlie Cameron and Lincoln McCarthy all did so at other clubs before moving to Queensland in the last three years.

In stark contrast, Geelong boast a team that is brimming with preliminary final experience, with Sam Simpson the only player from their semi-final win over Collingwood who is yet to play in the penultimate week.

Fagan, who was instrumental behind the scenes in Hawthorn’s hat-trick of premierships, has reached this stage many times before and said his players simply need to keep their minds on the job.

“The last thing you can think about is the grand final, you’ve just got to think about the game that you’ve got to play,” Fagan said.

“The rest of it will take care of itself and if you start thinking about other things I reckon that you probably play with a bit more fear.

“We don’t want fears tomorrow so we’ll just focus on the process.

“That’s the same message that Grant Birchall or Lachie Neale will give … but it’s no different to the (qualifying) final we played the other day.

“We’ll take the learnings from that and apply them to the game tomorrow night.”

Brisbane kept Richmond gun Dustin Martin quiet in their last outing, in a positive sign ahead of a meeting with Geelong’s similarly versatile Patrick Dangerfield.

The Cats’ star dominated with four goals in attack to spearhead last week’s thumping of Collingwood, but has the potential to be equally as damaging through the midfield.

“It’s no different to the Dustin Martin situation two weeks ago where you have a plan for both,” Fagan said.

“Ultimately what you want is your team to play really well so that if he’s playing up forward the supply is limited.

“As we saw last week, if he’s able to get relatively uncontested and easy ball coming in then he’s marking it.

“So it will be the effort of the collective team that will decide how well any Geelong player will play.”

Fagan said Brisbane had learnt from their 27-point defeat to Geelong in round six at the SCG.

But they have not reflected on the two sides’ most recent meeting at the Gabba, in round 22 last year, when the Lions prevailed in a thriller by one point.