21 goals and 33 behinds.
That's the Brisbane Lions' scorecard for the past fortnight. They average a goal accuracy rate of 38.9 per centโa figure worse than any club's current league average.
The inaccuracy, in turn, has cost the Lions two valuable wins against top eight sides that would have assured a top two spot on the ladder following Round 14, but now the Lions position inside double-chance calculations are growing slimmer.
An infectious last quarter of goalkicking woes saw the Lions miss their 10 shots on goal in the final term against the Crows last week, squandering their 17-point three-quarter-time advantage, while their contrasting display to GWS' sharpshooting tally of 17.5 allowed the Giants to rebound from their own tough fortnight, surviving a scare from Richmond and losing to Port Adelaide, to claim an away victory at the Gabba.
However, Brisbane Lions coach Chris Fagan is not panicking about the form slump in front of the posts, despite the expected attention around his side's inaccuracy.
Althugh the Lions goalkicking was off again on Saturday, Fagan posed that GWS' stunning strikerate contributed highly to the upset defeat.
"We didn't kick straight, and they kicked incredibly well from long distances out. They're usually low percentage shots, but they kicked them through the middle, particularly early," Fagan said.
"I think four of their first five goals came from kicks outside 50, if my memory is correct. So the first thing is accuracy. When you generate 31 shots on goal you should win most games."
However, Fagan said the lack of conversion has been an impeding factor on Brisbane's performances this season, stating that the Lions struggles have "hurt" the team's ability to rip the game from their opponents.
"(Inaccuracy) hurts you sometimes, because you don't break the spirit of the opposition when you should," Fagan said.
"We sort of had that to a degree last week, although it was later in the game when that happened, but, you know, this week and even against Essendon, 17 shots to five at halftime, but we only had a four goal lead, so we've just got to keep working on our goal kicking.
"We work on our goal kicking. I know it's an obvious question to ask, but there's only so many hours in a week that you can practice. And we do as much of it as we can, and we'll keep doing that as that's been a big factor in the last two weeks."
The Lions won't narrow their focus completely though, as a game against Geelong at GMHBA Stadium in Round 15 presents yet another challenge to the reigning premiers.
"By and large, the last few weeks has been enough (goalkicking practice). So we always keep working away on that and not become too psycho about it, because you can't, because everyone will talk about it."
"...We'll just dust ourselves off and go down and play as good a brand of footy as we can and see what happens.
"I mean our losses this year, we lost last week and had more shots, lost this week, more shots. We've lost four games and two of them, we had more shots.
"It's bloody frustrating, but that's life, that's footy, and it's just a problem. We've got to work our way through it."
