Assistant Coach Danny Daly has reflected positively on the Lions' Round One win against the Gold Coast SUNS on Saturday night.

At one stage the Lions led by as much as 47-points, but they were chased down by the SUNS after half time when the scores were equalised. The Lions steadied late in the game and went on to win by 2 points.

"The pleasing part of the game from the weekend was not only the first quarter, but also when Gold Coast came really hard at us in the second half and they levelled the score, for our players to fight back and win contested ball in the last ten minutes and to get momentum back on our terms was really pleasing leading into round 2." 

Daly said that, while the Lions' defence was pivotal, it was the work done further up the ground to create pressure and turnovers which was most pleasing.

"Gold Coast obviously scored 96 points but they only scored 23 points in the first half which is an outstanding effort from our defence," Daly said.

"The SUNS had 72 inside-50s but most of those were high kicks so they weren't kicks to the advantage of their forwards.

"A lot of that has to do with the pressure up the field  from our midfielders and forwards but in saying that, our defenders played a great game."

"Harris Andrews obviously did a great job on (Tom Lynch), Darcy Gardiner played his reliable game and our half back flankers - Cutler, Mayes, Harwood - were solid in defence and did the job in terms of being able to spoil the opposition and then rebound the ball effectively for us."