BRISBANE Lions ruckman Jamie Charman has sounded a red alert for his side, saying they need to lift immediately or perish.

The Lions are just one game ahead of ninth-placed Adelaide and a game-and-a-half in front of Saturday’s opponent’s Richmond.

The Tigers are on a hot streak, having won four of their past five matches, while the Lions are lukewarm at best, winning just two of their past five games.

More damning for the night match at Telstra Dome is the Lions' away record in 2008.

The Queenslanders have lost five of seven interstate games, including a shock loss to Melbourne at the MCG last month, and another to Essendon at the Dome a fortnight ago.

“It is certainly touch and go,” Charman said.

“If we lose the next couple of games we are outside the eight we are very conscious of it.

“Coming into these couple of weeks we have got to step it up and start playing better football than we have been.”

Charman pinpointed skills errors as the main issue.

“As a team our ineffective kicks is killing us,” Charman said. “And clanger kicks and turning (over) the ball so it is something we need to improve on.

“The past couple of weeks we have emphasised it a fair bit so we are looking for improvement.”

He said the club had taken a different pre-match approach to try and revive their interstate form.

“We are going to have a reasonable sort of training session today [Friday] at the Junction Oval and change it up a little bit from what we’ve been doing in the past.

“We have a young group and we need to get better with our away games. “

But Charman had some good news for the Lions, saying gun duo Jonathan Brown and Simon Black were in better condition for the game.

“They are certainly better than they were last week,” Charman said.

“It is just a continual maintenance thing with them [but] they are going into the game much fitter than they were last week.”