DESPITE going down by 48 points to the reigning premier yesterday, Brisbane coach Justin Leppitsch admitted to being a bit excited in the third quarter of yesterday's clash when his side got within two points of Hawthorn.
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"I mean you can't worry about the exact aspect of the scoreboard too much, but the disappointing part coming into three-quarter- time was you see you've matched them in scoring shots but you're still 25 points behind the top team," he said.
"You've actually been really competitive and I guess that can be a little disheartening.
"But I thought we snuck away for the first five or six minutes and then a couple of bad turnovers and missed tackles and that's what tests teams in the middle row, which I suppose we are - how you hold your composure, and we didn't in the end."
Leppitsch said the final- quarter effort was disappointing after being competitive for much of the game.
"They were breaking tackles and a lot of those entries I talked about they were breaking two to three tackles going inside 50, and when you've got some lighter bodies in that last quarter sometimes you can't hold your tackles and they steamroll you, and there was a little bit of that," he said.
But Leppitsch said there were positives for his side out of the match, describing it as an "on par" performance.
"Probably going in I thought we'd struggle to run out the game, given their experience and their legs," he said. "It's hard at times - we all want to win every contest and we don't want to lose anything.
"We're all humans, we're all competitive, but you have to sometimes look at it in the bigger picture."