THE Brisbane Lions have vowed to use the lessons learned from last week's 91-point mauling by Carlton as they head west to take on Fremantle at Patersons Stadium this weekend.
Utility Ash McGrath admitted Carlton's frantic four-quarter pace caught the Lions out last Thursday night, and said his side had to learn to better control the tempo of the contest to compete with the best sides in the competition.
After going goal-for-goal in an exciting first quarter against the Blues, the Lions were run ragged by their energised opponents, who showed a distinct gap in class between the teams.
McGrath said once the Lions got their hands on the footy, they had to be smarter about how they used it.
"We're not quite a team that can play flat-out footy for four quarters," McGrath said.
"We learnt some things from the game about what kind of pace we can play at.
"We've just got to get hold of the footy. The backline will take most of the brunt for that.
"The pressure (Carlton) put on, we played real frantic footy. What we need to do is get hold of the footy, hit a target and slow the pace down, use our foot skills to get through towards the centre and then play on and get over the zone.
"While they pressured us, we couldn't get our hands on the footy. We had targets we could have hit, but we couldn't see them because of the pressure that was coming from the midfield down."
McGrath said the Lions were looking forward to redeeming themselves against Fremantle.
Lions captain Jonathan Brown will return after missing six weeks with a fractured cheekbone, while the Saturday afternoon clash will mark the return of Lions' assistant coach Mark Harvey to Perth after he was dramatically ousted as coach of Fremantle last season and replaced by Ross Lyon.
Harvey has shied away from the media this week, but McGrath hoped the ex-Fremantle coach would be a source of knowledge on his former team.
McGrath said having Brown back would not only give the Lions a focal point in the forward line, but allow the back six to reunite with Daniel Merrett's likely return to defence.
"The 'Big Rusty Fist' (Merrett) is known as the number one spoiler in the comp and probably gives our backline the presence down there that 'Browny' would have in the forward line," he said.
"Big Goose (Matt) Maguire has held on pretty well down there, (but Merrett) just makes our back six. We've played together for a while and to have big Daniel missing from that six kind of hurt, but I thought we did pretty well to fill his space."
Michael Whiting covers Brisbane Lions news for AFL.com.au. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_mikewhiting
