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.”

Meanwhile, Tiger Chris Newman rated Brown and forward-line partner Daniel Bradshaw as key factors in the result.

“They have got the capability of kicking six or seven goals each so you put those two in there and that’s a match-winning score,” Newman said.

“We are looking forward to the challenge; we have got a pretty young backline so I know all the boys are looking forward to learning a lot by playing on those types of players.”

Newman said being in the hunt for a top-eight berth this late in the season had provided a pleasant change.

“It is good to be alive in this time of the year, I personally haven’t had that and a lot of the other boys haven’t either,” Newman said.

“It is really exciting, every game gets harder as the weeks go on and [we are] just really looking forward to the challenge.

“You try not to get ahead of yourselves; we are in no position to get ahead of ourselves.”

But Newman suggested that the surface at Telstra Dome would suit his side.

“Telstra Dome is a fast track and we have got a pretty fast group at the moment, which is something we have developed over the past couple of years. We do look forward to playing here.