DANIEL Rich is arguably the Brisbane Lions' most lethal attacking weapon, but even he is preaching defence ahead of round one.
Since rookie coach Justin Leppitsch was appointed to take over from former teammate Michael Voss last September, the Lions' mantra has been simple – improvement starts with defence.
The Lions won 10 games in each of the past two seasons and punctuated their patchy campaigns with rousing victories over then top-two teams West Coast and Adelaide (2012), and Essendon and Geelong (2013).
Last year they mixed horrible first quarter capitulations with memorable comeback wins over the Cats and North Melbourne.
Their play was as frustrating as it was exciting.
Leppitsch has arrived with a very distinctive gameplan, and after three pre-season matches, it is slowly starting to sink in.
At Monday night's season launch, he reiterated his desire to lift the Lions' percentage – it was 89.65 last season – as a sign of more consistency.
Rich echoed that message prior to a skills session at Coorparoo on Tuesday morning.
"Just being in games more. Not in the position to be 30, 40, 50 points behind and come back and try for a miraculous win," Rich said, when asked what his club’s goals were.
"We'd rather be closer (to our opponents), whether the game is more low scoring that doesn't bother us, we just want to be more consistent."
The Lions' plan is simple – move the ball in a way that allows the defence to be already set-up if there's a turnover.
In Saturday's final practice match loss to the Sydney Swans, they kept the flag fancies to just 86 points, without ever really threatening to win themselves.
A forward line compromising an underdone Jonathan Brown, youngster Michael Close and versatile Luke McGuane struggled to create chances.
Rich said the ball movement and forward line set-up was something they would work on ahead of the round one trip to Launceston to play Hawthorn on March 22.
"It's better that we find out now rather than round one, two or three," Rich said of the offensive struggles.
"It’s definitely something we're going to work on at training and improve before round one."
Twitter: @AFL_mikewhiting https://twitter.com/AFL_mikewhiting
