BRISBANE Lions coach Leigh Matthews will order his players back to school ahead of Saturday night’s critical clash with the West Coast Eagles at the Gabba.

Matthews has identified problems in the Lions’ technique in contested situations and ball control following their loss to Essendon on Saturday night.

“Some of our players are going into the contest a bit upright, they are not actually getting forward with their head down over the ball,” he said on Monday.

“And that means you are not going to get the footy and you’re going to get knocked off balance.

“I just sense there is a little bit of bad technique approaching the ground-level footy which makes me think we’ve got to do more ground level work.

“We were slightly down over the whole game on clearances. When the ball came off the ruckman’s hands we got the ball in our hands more often than they did but we coughed it up.

“We’ve got to work a little on ball control and making sure we hold the ball in the tackle.”

Although the Lions lost to Essendon by 37 points to slip back into what is a titanic struggle for the last couple of positions in the top eight, Matthews doesn’t believe the Lions played badly.

“We played some good footy on Saturday night but they played better than us in more patches,” he said

“You split up the game and unfortunately in the last bit of the second, third and fourth quarters they have probably kicked about 10 goals ... they scored a lot of goals late in those quarters.

 “I think it was a bit of Russian roulette footy. Once they got the break at the start and they were five goals up you can’t just maintain possession (and expect to win) ... you have to actually score.”

The Eagles have beaten the Lions the last four times they have met at the Gabba, by an average of 56 points. Matthews said, although they are struggling, West Coast still have many of the same players and personnel.

“If we expect they are just to come up and roll over we will get a very rude shock,” Matthews said.