THE NAB Cup may be over for the Brisbane Lions, but Michael Voss has been left with plenty to ponder as he prepares his side for the premiership season.

There were positives and negatives in about equal measure to come out of the tight loss to Essendon on Friday night, but Voss has seen enough to be confident his team is headed in the right direction.

"We take a lot out of the game. A lot of good stuff and a lot of bad stuff, but one of the components we'd like to fix pretty quickly is our goalkicking," Voss said after his players kicked themselves out of a win with eight last-quarter behinds.

"I think both teams probably had a fair chance to kick a winning score, but we weren't able to convert those chances and in this game you only get a few of them.

"[But] I can't fault their competitiveness. They were absolutely super at that. Not only that, but when the game was against them they were under severe pressure at varying times and [they showed the] ability to keep coming at the contest and keep presenting and keep believing in what we need to be able to do – they had trust in that."

Young Lion Jack Redden may have hooked his potentially game winning set shot with 18 seconds left on the clock after a stirring final term fight back, but Voss felt it would be an important experience for the first-year player.

Josh Drummond continued his bright start to the 2009 campaign with a 30-possession performance and Voss was hopeful the injury-troubled 25-year-old had turned a corner.

"He can organise us, he certainly straightens us up out of defence and he has a lethal left foot, but he's one of those guys that we want to be able to step up," he said.

"His main focus is just making sure he gets durability into his game."

Voss has now had two matches to observe how the new game style he has implemented is taking shape and while his charges still have a lot of work to do he is prepared to be patient.

"It's not ingrained in them yet, it's not habitual where you just want it to be instinctive, so that's something that we've got to work on and find different ways to teach it," he said.

"We'll keep doing that and I thought we were better at it in the second half. We didn't quite get it right and Essendon was getting a lot of run out of the back 50 in stoppages and they were able to flow the ball out a bit too easily.

"We just didn't have the right people in place or the right structure and as a result they penetrated us a few times there.  

"They'll get it [though] – it just takes a little time when you're learning a new way."

No injuries were reported from the encounter with the Lions now set to take on Melbourne in a NAB Challenge match in Cairns next weekend.