St Kilda poked ahead in the final term, but Brisbane, with their ever present wisdom and guile calmly reclaimed its lead and ran away to a hard-fought, and at times feisty, Round 3 victory.
It was the Lions' first win of the season, but it didn't come without its dark clouds as more injuries rained on Brisbane's parade. In a brutal hip and shoulder contest with St Kilda's Liam Ryan, key defender Darcy Gardiner immediately fell to the ground clutching at his right arm and shoulder.
Lions defender Noah Answerth was felled by spectacular pack mark by St Kilda's Alix Tauru with Brisbane coach Chris Fagan noting how injuries are often the dark part of a 'specky'.
"Noah was a concussion, that was a nasty one," Fagan said.
"We love the specky marks, and it was a great mark and he obviously never meant to knee Noah in the head, but that's the problem with the specky isn't it? There is always that danger.
"I think Darcy's shoulder injury is quite significant, I don't expect to have him on Thursday. He might be out for a fair while."
Despite the fresh batch of injuries, Brisbane won the match by 33 points away from home at Marvel Stadium.
With the scores tight heading into the last change of ends, Fagan said he put it on one of his young guns to be the difference maker.
"I thought Will Ashcroft was particularly damaging in that last quarter," he said.
"He probably had a bit of a quiet game up until that point in time, even his first couple weeks have been quiet by Will's standards.
"I gave him a little bit of a poke at three-quarter time and said, 'Mate, it's about time you got going', and he said to me after the game, 'Did I get going?' And I said, 'You did mate, thanks for that'. He was terrific."
After coming under fire by St Kilda stakeholders for questioning whether Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera was worth his two million dollar price tag, Fagan sent midfielder Jarrod Berry to tag the star Saint in the first half.
Wanganeen-Milera still had 17 touches across the first two quarters, but Fagan thought Berry dulled his influence with ball in hand.
"I thought Nasiah had a fair bit of ball in the first half, but it wasn't overly affective," he said.
"We just decided at halftime to free our 'mids' up a little bit. Josh Dunkley went to Nasiah at stoppage but outside of that we didn't worry too much about him. I think we played better as a result of that to some degree. You got to give tagging him fair consideration because he is a damaging and fantastic player."
