DON'T judge us on wins and losses, at least for now.
That was Chris Fagan's message as his 0-8 Brisbane side lurched within one defeat of their worst start in history on Saturday night at Etihad Stadium.
Carlton's drought-busting victory over Essendon earlier on Saturday meant the Lions had to beat the Western Bulldogs to avoid ending round eight on the bottom of the ladder.
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They kicked four of the first five goals of the final term to close within seven points, but ultimately left the ground 14 points adrift.
The result sits alongside single-digit defeats to Port Adelaide, Gold Coast and Collingwood, while they genuinely challenged St Kilda and Melbourne in four-goal losses.
"If you look at our good quarters of football this year, we compare very favourably with all the good teams in the comp, but we don't do it often enough yet," Fagan said afterwards.
"I've coached the team for 30 games now, but at the end of 2016, the points against average was 132 points a game. It's under 100 now, so they've come a fair way in 30 games and we'll continue to improve.
"You get 22 opportunities a year to play footy if you don't play finals and we all know it takes three, four seasons for young players who've just been drafted to mature into really good players.
"That's the process we're going through at the moment, so in some ways I'm really proud of them for the efforts they're making, but … we're not satisfied.
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"We'll keep pushing them, we want them to get better and they can't do it fast enough as far as we're concerned, but we have to be patient, too."
Fagan pointed to his team's 85 tackles as a great sign of effort and to Eric Hipwood giving himself the chance of kicking "six or seven goals" among the positives.
But he wasn't shy in offering reasons for why they were again on the losing end of the scale.
"At no stage did the team give up; we kept fighting and gave ourselves a sneaky chance part way through that last quarter, but they were good enough to compose themselves and finish off," Fagan said.
"I thought a couple of other things that hurt us tonight were turnovers that were not necessarily forced by the opposition, and shots on goal, because we missed some easy set shots.
"I think we might have kicked it out of bounds five or six times with other shots we had, so in tight games like that, all those things matter."
Fagan remains resolute and admits he knew his early win-loss record – now five victories from 30 – would make for ugly reading when he took over from Justin Leppitsch last season.
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"I, and we, understood when we took this job on 18 months ago, what we were getting ourselves into, and we knew it wasn't going to be a quick fix," he said.
"We all would like that (but) I certainly didn't take on the job thinking I was going to come out of it in the first few years with a fantastic win-loss record as a coach or anything like that.
"But what I get my joy out of, and what our coaches get their joy out of, is every day working with this group trying to get them to improve.
"One day we know they're going to be a really competitive side and we're going to really enjoy that process – and so will the players – so that's what we focus on."
