Brisbane coach Michael Voss was pleased with the improvement shown by his side in the Lions' loss to Geelong on Saturday afternoon.
The Lions were coming off a 75-point loss to the Hawks in Tasmania last week and while they still went down by 63 points this week, Voss was happy with the endeavour shown by his side.
The Cats booted the first nine goals of the match to kill off the contest, but instead of lying down and losing by 100+ points; Brisbane held its own in the second half to limit the damage.
While he was happy with his side's effort, Voss conceded that they will need to work on their ball movement if they are trouble the better sides in the competition.
"For us it wasn't so much about finesse today it was actually going to be about our will and the finesse side of things was probably in the end what let us down," Voss said after the match.
"To turn this situation around you've got to have your will first before the finesse comes so if we can persist at being able to make sure that we can get that right and our contest is vigorous and right to the very end despite being down by 10 goals we still had guys who were chasing and tackling and hitting in and going right to the siren."
"Ball movement and those sorts of things we've got to fix up but certainly early I thought that was the difference, it certainly wasn't the intent of both sides."
After recording a record low 25 forward 50 entries last week in an insipid display against Hawthorn, Voss put the pressure on the players to turn it around and he liked what he saw.
"We were noncompetitive last week so we had none of that," Voss added.
"What leaves a really bad taste in the mouth is it felt like we'd just given up, we just looked like we had that element that it was all too hard, but it wasn't like that today."
"They had nine goals to zero before we kicked a goal and then we kicked four of the next five."
"We saw out that game, I wouldn't say that it's positive, but it's positive signs. I don't think you'll ever walk away positive with the fact you lost by 10 goals but in terms of their approach to the game I'm proud of."
Voss also leapt to the defence of underfire forward Brendan Fevola, who endured another torrid day.
After kicking just one goal from two kicks last week, the former Blue once again only managed one major in another uninspiring performance, but his coach refused to single him out and said he was delighted with his chasing and tackling pressure.
"I think we saw some good signs today…those couple of chases he made down the wing - it lifts people around you, it becomes inspiring," Voss said of Fevola.
"I'd like him to be sitting back and kicking eight goals and doing all those nice things but it's what comes first and for us it's about having that will to see out the game and he wanted to do that and I think that others wanted to do that also."
"I think he's effort was good, I didn't look up and think that he was dragging the chain at all, he's playing on a good opponent, the ball wasn't coming in all that flush, but it wasn't because of his effort."