Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan says his young side are on the right track and have taken small steps in the right direction in some key areas.
Despite their 0-6 start to the season, the former Hawthorn assistant has outlined the Lions’ progress in limiting the opposition scores and winning the ball at the source.
However, it’s the inefficiency in the attacking half of the ground that Fagan is lamenting, especially in their loss to Greater Western Sydney on Saturday.
“I think we’ve improved as a football team,” he told SEN’s Time On.
“We’ve been much more competitive in the first six games than we were last year.
“We’ve been in a position bar the Richmond game to challenge for victory. Last year we averaged about 116 points against per game and we’re 94 at the moment so that’s a three and a half goal improvement defensively.
“We were a poor clearance team last year and we are number two for clearance differential at the moment.
“We won 30 percent of our quarters last year in contested ball and this year we have won half.
“The bit of our game that’s causing us a few problems at the moment is our ball movement – more so inside 50.
“It happened again on the weekend against GWS. We were really competitive throughout that game and in the first quarter we kicked five points – we should have kicked more accurately.
“We also had eight or nine other opportunities to set up scoring shots that we managed to find a way to make an error and they didn’t turn into scores for us.”
Fagan also defended the out of form Dayne Zorko, saying he is still coming to terms with the close attention he is faced with on a weekly basis.
“It’s a new scenario for him,” he said.
“He had a brilliant year last year and was an All-Australian. Teams are doing their homework on us and they can see that Dayne is a real motivator for us so he is learning to come to grips with that.
“I think he has been tagged in every game this year. It’s like anything new, you go through a learning phase of success and failure and you work out what works for you and you come up with a solution.
“I’m sure in time with patience from us and his teammates becoming better as well, he will work his way through that to be the player he was last year.”
Listen to Chris Fagan's chat with Sam McClure in the player below