A FURIOUS Michael Voss has questioned the attitude of his players and has declared Simon Black's 37-possession game against North Melbourne on Saturday as the benchmark for his team over its last five games.

The Brisbane Lions coach was seething after his players fell away from the contest after three quarters against the Roos to go down by 45 points.

It was the third straight week the Lions have failed to run out a game after being competitive against Hawthorn and Geelong until the same stage over the past fortnight.

He said his players simply "weren't good enough" against the Roos, and queried their mental application to the contest.

"It's not fitness. I don't believe it is. Call it attitude. We've got to find new limits for ourselves," he said.

"We're testing ourselves as a group and we've got some newer type players that are playing roles, but if you stay inside your comfort zone the whole time, then you never actually learn anything about yourself.

"At the moment, we're staying too much on the comfort zone side, so we're not learning too much about ourselves except what we already know.

"At the moment, that's not good enough."

It was a vintage display from the 2002 Brownlow medallist. He was the only player from either side to clear 30 possessions while he had 14 inside 50s, laid eight tackles and had six clearances.

Voss said he would use Black's hunger as the prime example for his young side when it looked for motivation to finish the season well.

"I know Simon Black wants to, because you only have to look at the bloke and how he actually plays to see that he wants that," he said.

"Whether we've got enough blokes that can follow a Jonathan Brown, and he's injured, he's hurt himself, but have we got enough blokes that want to follow an example of that, contest, and an example of Simon Black and what he does in a contest where he runs himself into submission?

"Are we going to be good enough to do that? That's something; finishing strong is a fairly good theme, coming into the last five weeks of the season.

"I hope they grab his tape and I hope they watch him. Just solely him and no one else.

"Unless you want to be able to have that sort of attitude or intent, whatever you want to call it … he's my pin up boy for the next five weeks, I guess."

Voss found it hard to highlight areas he was pleased with but said the new-look forward structure, minus Brown, operated well "for parts".

The Lions started with Mitch Clark and Aaron Cornelius deep, and Todd Banfield and Patrick Karnezis high, with Cornelius and Karnezis the most effective with two goals each although they too faded from the game.

"Ayce [Cornelius] presented nicely, but much the same story, isn't' it?" he said.

"You've still got to be able to go for the whole game, and we're not doing that.

"The courage to be able to keep running when you're tired is not something that is good enough for us at the moment.

"I could talk about individuals; I could talk about some of the niceties of having some of the young players, if you want to call it, coming through, but not today."

Despite the fact he was irate with the performance, Voss said it wouldn't change the way the club approached next week's bye and the players would still be given time to "physically and mentally recoup" before the final five matches.