Speaking after the Lions’ thumping 93-point defeat at the hands of Geelong, Brown said his team had seen the match as a chance to build its self-belief.
“The effort wasn’t there in the clinches and that is the hard thing to stomach when you’ve got moments or opportunities throughout the season, and this was one of the moments where you can really gain that self-belief in each other and we were found wanting,” Brown said.
“We’ve got to find another opportunity now because I would say the trust and belief amongst each other wouldn’t be fantastic at the moment.”
Brown said there were very few, if any, positives to take from the game.
“You’d like to be able to walk out of these rooms and say we were good today. But they were better than us,” he said.
“You get knocked over by 100 points and you walk out embarrassed and disheartened. So we take nothing out of that test. We’ve just got to wait for the next opportunity.”
The thought of travelling to Victoria to take on the Cats at a wet and windy Skilled Stadium would be intimidating for most sides but Brown said his team was not overwhelmed by the prospect.
“It didn’t look it to me. The last couple of days, guys had steeliness in the eyes and we were excited by it. We relish the wet, well we thought we did. We thought it was a good opportunity to base our game on tackling pressure and pressure around the footy and that didn’t happen,” he said.
“We’ve all got to be more disciplined in our roles. Geelong was fantastic today – they play their roles.”
Brown kicked three goals as a forward and also spent time in the midfield but he and his teammates couldn’t do anything to stop the highly-rated Geelong onballers.
“They’re good players. They read the ball really well. It was difficult today because we were undersized in the ruck so we were going to end up a bit reactive when that happens. As soon as you go reactive against those blokes you’re going to be in a bit of trouble,” he said.
