BRISBANE Lions coach Leigh Matthews lamented his side's inability to capitalise on lengthy periods of dominance in allowing fast-finishing Richmond to snatch a dramatic three-point win on Saturday night.

The Lions held a 31-point lead late in the third quarter at Telstra Dome, but were reeled in by the Tigers, who outscored Brisbane eight goals to three in the final term.

"Unfortunately the last quarter says it all. Richmond were in control of the game and they kick 8.2 where in the third quarter we kicked 6.6, so unless you dominate the game you can't kick inaccurately and win," Matthews said.

"They took their shots really well and kicked really accurately. We generated the shots, but we missed too big a percentage; that was probably the single-most reason why they won and we didn't.

"We made some bad defensive errors; sometimes the opposition wins the game and sometimes you lose it. Given where we were at three-quarter time we obviously lost it with some bad cough-ups of possession and some really bad turnovers that got them some pretty cheap goals."

The reason for the turnaround was pretty evident to Matthews, with the Tigers managing 105 possessions in the last quarter to Brisbane's 59.

"They just got the ball. That's why games ebb and flow. People ask why; well, it's which team is getting the footy in the crunches," he said.

"We did that in the third quarter and you would have thought it was a gale-force wind to that right-hand [Coventry] end, but in the last quarter they did it and their forwards were good enough … to get it when the ball went in there.

"If you have too many eight-goal quarters against you you're not going to win too often. The end result was we scored well too and had a lot of scoring shots, but they kicked 19 goals because they pretty much kicked every shot they had.

"We started well and the game varied mainly according to who was getting the ball around the middle."

Despite the difficulties encountered by his onballers on the night, Matthews was disappointed not to come away with the points, having done enough to regain the lead with five minutes left to play.

"We actually got badly beaten in the stoppages in the first half. Some how or other we were two points down at half time, but we actually were getting killed in those stoppage, centre bounce, congested areas," he said.

"We surrendered a couple of leads, in the last few minutes and at three-quarter time, but I thought we played some really good footy and I think Richmond are going as well as most at the moment. It's disappointing that we couldn't get our noses in front."