JAMIE Charman attributed the Brisbane Lions’ win against Carlton to its efficiency in front of goal – and he can take some of the credit after a strong performance up forward.

Charman’s two goals early in the first quarter not only put Brisbane on the scoreboard, they set the tone for a night of accurate shooting from the Queensland side.

In fact, the visitors only registered one behind in the first half, kicking 13.1 to half time on their way to a 12-point win.

“If you kick straight early, it always helps the team,” Charman says.

“For some reason if you start kicking straight, it seems to stick even towards the end of the game. Our goalkicking was really good tonight, we didn’t miss too many.”

The 24-year-old finished the game with a personal tally of three goals, the third of those coming during a Brisbane goal spree in the 3rd quarter when the Lions were battling a half time deficit.

“It’s not bad for me, it’s not very often I get down forward so it was good to kick a few goals,” Charman said.

The Lions tasted defeat at the hands of the Blues only six weeks ago in the NAB Cup Grand Final, but Charman says he wouldn’t swap his side’s round five victory for the title of victors in the pre-season tournament.

“It would have been a great game to win and great financially for the club, but in the end it wasn’t to be. We learned a hell of a lot about it tonight, you’d rather win a home and away game than win a NAB Cup,” Charman says.

The ruckman says playing in the NAB Cup against the Blues so close to the season proper was advantageous for the Lions’ game plan.

“It certainly helped to see what style of play they were going in with. They like to be man on man around the stoppages and we knew we would have to work with that the best way we could,” Charman said.

Brisbane started the match strongly but three straight goals from the Blues before the interval meant that they trailed by 13 points at half time.

“We dropped a fair few tackles in that first half. We weren’t playing as well as we should have. We weren’t attacking the ball, they were really attacking it, their pressure was really good. It wasn’t until the second half that we turned things around, we got on top of the tackling, the pressure was good and we started to move the ball a little bit better too,” Charman says.

Charman praised the ability of his team to rack up scores from a wide range of players rather than just depending on star full forward Jonathon Brown to come up with the goods.

“It was all across the board with Ash (Ashley McGrath) and ‘Johnno’ (Chris Johnson) and a few midfield goals from Colm (Begley) and other players, which certainly helped,” he said.

Charman relishes the prospect of getting home to the Gabba for next weekend’s assignment against Fremantle.

“It’s great to get back in front of your home crowd. Fremantle will have a long travel over so if we could win that one it would be awesome.”