Lions coach Chris Fagan has denied errant goalkicking is a matter for Brisbane regardless of dreadful inaccuracy maintaining the door open for Sydney.
The premiership contenders kicked 6-14 after halftime of their 13.19 (97) to 12.9 (81) victory on the Gabba On Friday, dominating the within 50s however unable to kill off the plucky Swans.
Fagan admitted his frustrations post-match, admitting the 16-point win “should have been more like five or six goals”.
“No disrespect to Sydney, I felt like we should have won by a lot more than we did,” he mentioned.
“We were quite a dominant team, eight shots in the second, 11 in the third and nine in the last and to kick 3-8 in that third quarter, we were completely in control but couldn’t finish off.”
The third-term efficiency introduced again recollections of their latest spherical 11 away loss to Adelaide when Brisbane kicked 1-9 and in the end misplaced by three objectives.
“That happened against Adelaide — we didn’t kick well — and we lost that game,” Fagan mentioned.
“Tonight, we found a way to win but it should have been a little easier.”
Brisbane have had their battles with accuracy underneath him prior to now, however the coach felt the poor ending in latest weeks was extra an anomaly than a pattern.
“I don’t want to make a problem for us, just tonight I felt that. Overall we’ve been better,” he mentioned. “We’ll just keep working at that.”
While Lachie Neale and Zac Bailey starred, Fagan was effectively happy with the contributions of every of his promoted gamers Dev Robertson, Kai Lohmann, Kidean Coleman, Darcy Forte and debutant Jaspa Fletcher.
Fletcher, the son of former Brisbane midfielder Adrian, regarded assured all through and introduced the 28,561-strong crowd to their ft within the second quarter with a scintillating counter-attacking objective that put the Lions within the lead.
Swans coach John Longmire bemoaned his facet’s lack of self-discipline which gifted the Lions some gentle objectives.
“It was the same story of what happened last week,” he mentioned. “We’ve got to get that better than what we’ve been doing,”
“We have to stick to the process for longer and different times doing the basics better than we did.”
But Longmire was effectively happy with the trouble and is not giving up on the season regardless of the 2022 grand finalists dropping effectively under finals rivalry at 5-8.
Giving trigger for optimism is a Swans cavalry set to return.
Longmire mentioned Isaac Heeney (concussion), Callum Mills (calf), Tom McCartin (concussion) and Logan McDonald (ankle) all skilled in Sydney on Friday and have been on monitor for subsequent week’s dwelling match in opposition to the battling West Coast.
“We’d love to get a few of those players back, maybe (Lance) Franklin next week too, there will be a few handy ones, but we do have to manage that as some have missed a fair bit of footy,” he mentioned.
“We have to get the balance right as we still have a lot to play for.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
