CONVERSION was the Blues downfall on Saturday night, scoring just the one goal from 28 inside 50s against the Lions.
Senior Coach Mathew Buck admitted that while areas of their game like ball movement and defence had improved, he admitted the lack of scoreboard impact is starting to frustrate the group.
Buck did praise Marianna Anthony for her role on Brisbane star Ally Anderson, holding her to just 19 disposals despite averaging 28 disposals coming into the game.
Here's what he had to say.
On Brisbane:
"Brisbane are an amazing team, an amazing organisation, I think they’ve proven that time and time again and we have the utmost respect for them.
"They came and gave us a good lesson tonight, they’re a relentless side around the contest and we’ve got some learnings to take away. We had some moments in the game where we would’ve liked to capitalise but they were excellent."
On the scoreboard impact:
"That’s a real frustration for sure. We’ve gone after our ball use and I think it has improved but that’s not reflected on the scoreboard. Until you take your moments in front of goal, you don’t get the reward.
"That’s something that’s stinging the group at the moment and it’s something we’ll get to work on. I think one of the pleasing things is that it does sting our group and they’re not happy with the results at the moment. We’ll continue to work on it and get better."
On Marianna Anthony's tagging role:
"Ally is one of the stars of the competition and if we can negate her - which I think Marianna did - I thought 'Mez' really stuck to her task tonight and did a fantastic job.
"There’s a balance with that with the midfield and how it can open you up a bit and maybe that happened at times but I thought at times, Marianna did a fantastic job.
"For Marianna to go and play on one of the best players in the competition, you walk away with some lessons for sure. One of those is work rate and positioning and we’ll unpack that throughout the week.
"What Ally was really good at was freeing up space for her teammates to work in as well. That’s some good lessons for our other midfielders in how we need to act when that happens. We’re proud of 'Mez' overall."
On Maddy Hendrie:
"Maddy Hendrie played on [Taylor] Smith as well down at full back and did some great things before hurting her foot.
"She'll be assessed now."
On the fixture and missing personnel:
"I think we’ve played five top-eight sides and that’s where we want to be, we want to be playing against the good sides and we need to front up a bit better than we have been.
"To do it without your captain and vice captain is difficult for sure but we put 21 players out there tonight and we expected a better result than what we got. We’ll continue to go to work on what we need to do."
