Brisbane faces the tough prospect of Sydney, Adelaide then Geelong to round out the regular season and needs to win them all now that the safety net has been removed by the 24-point loss.
“It’s a mathematical equation so I’ve got no inside knowledge on it really,” Matthews said of his side’s chances of September action.
“All we know is that if we had a one-match margin for error to sneak into the eight, that’s [now] gone probably.
“It doesn’t matter, from our point of view, we'll be doing our best next week and we’ll be doing our best the week after that and the week after that.
“We’re nine-and-a-half wins; if you get 12-and-a-half wins you’ll probably make it, if you get 11-and-a-half you might, but probably not.”
The Lions held the upper hand in the first half of the absorbing contest, but conceded seven goals to two in the third quarter to slip out of contention. Matthews didn’t break it down too far when asked where he felt it had gone wrong for the Lions.
“It’s stating the obvious, but they did it better,” he said.
“They took control around the middle of the ground, they over-lapped off half-back and got hold of us in the third quarter.
“The ‘why’ is always the interesting question, no one ever knows quite the answer, you only know what your eyes tell you, and they just did it better.
“We played quite well in the first half, but didn’t take all our chances, they kicked a couple of goals late in the first and second quarter.
“We probably did better in the first half and maybe we could have been further in front, but really the game happens and you either do or you don’t.”
The marquee match-up of Jonathan Brown versus Trent Croad was an entertaining one and, with six goals, Matthews said the co-captain had done more than his share on the day.
“Jonathan clearly won it,” he said of the duel.
“[He’s] had nearly 20 possessions and kicked six goals; if you don’t think that’s best on ground then it’s because you rate Jonathan Brown so highly, you’re rating it compared to Jonathan Brown.
“He was exceptionally good, but you can’t expect much more than for one of your forwards to kick a half a dozen. We couldn’t quite get enough that were working around him.”
