Brisbane's Confidence Rocked: Matthews

The Sunday Age

Sunday August 10, 2008

By Chloe Saltau, Launceston

AS A satisfied Alastair Clarkson celebrated the perfect end to Shane Crawford's 300th game and a certain top-four finish, his Brisbane Lions counterpart Leigh Matthews confessed the confidence of his players was shaken after their finals hopes were all but ended with an "unpleasant experience" in Launceston.

Although Matthews said "our destiny is still in our own hands", the Lions must win all three remaining games to scrape into the top eight, after Lance Franklin booted six goals to spearhead the Hawks' victory and take his season tally to 91.

Brisbane has now lost five of its past six games, and Matthews said yesterday's thrashing, after a series of narrow losses, would have taken a toll. To add to Brisbane's woes, the season of defender Josh Drummond appears to be over after he strained a quad muscle.

"All your unpleasant experiences knock your confidence a bit," Matthews said. "You've got to have the resilience to be able to take your losses without it dragging you down. We've had a bit of disappointment the last couple of weeks with not being able to win games that were winnable, and now we've had the disappointment of being eventually taken apart on the scoreboard.

"It's going to take all our resilience, and our determined-ness, to make sure we come up again next week. That indefinable confidence would have to be a bit shaky at the moment (for) a lot of guys."

Matthews also hailed the freakish abilities of Franklin, who ingnited his team with a run down the wing to set up a goal to Cyril Rioli that got the Hawks going after both teams employed heavy zones to restrict the power forwards in the first half.

"That's the thing about a guy like Franklin," Matthews said. "You think he didn't do anything special and he kicked six goals. He's a tough, tough match-up. I don't think too many defenders in the game would enjoy going to play on him.

"When he plays as a midfielder, when he runs forward off the half-back line, he runs a bit faster than everyone else. He's got some freaky capabilities for a bloke of his size."

Clarkson said his team would draw huge confidence from its ability to cope with the Lions' tactics in clogging up Franklin's space, and from restricting Jonathan Brown and Daniel Bradshaw to three goals between them.

"It makes us a certainty to finish in the top four . . . Now we can focus on the next three games and get ready for the finals," he said. "It was a demonstration of the maturity of our group to come through that and get the four points."

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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