BRISBANE Lions coach Michael Voss has backed Jonathan Brown to lead his side out of a worrying form slump that has seen the Lions slide right out of the top eight.

Brown's own form has dipped along with that of his team which faces Geelong this weekend on the back of a three-game losing run.

Despite persistent rumours the skipper is carrying an injury, Voss gave him a clean bill of health and expressed full confidence in his ability to bounce back after a couple of out-of-character performances in the last three weeks.

"One thing you know about Brownie's form is that if it's not as good as you need it to be, that's only going to be temporary," Voss said. "He's in a bit of a lull. He certainly started the season on fire, but the good thing is we had 11 goal kickers on the weekend and that's something we haven't had for a long period of time.

"We'd obviously love to have Brownie getting up and about, but that footy wasn't coming down as clean as you'd hope for the big fella.

"We certainly need to improve our ball movement down there to help our bigger guys and if they can start to get on the move again I'm sure they'll return to form pretty quickly."

Voss' task in engineering a return to the winner's list is made all the more difficult by the loss of Josh Drummond and Jared Brennan to injury.

Drummond underwent LARS surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament on Tuesday and Voss was delighted the important defender was a viable candidate for the procedure that will give him the opportunity to return this season.
 
"LARS chooses you, you don't choose it - the decision is made for you based on a few factors within the knee," he said of the decision to go with the relatively new method.

"For his rehabilitation and for us it's fantastic news. I'm sure when he wakes up and he's not feeling so groggy, he'll be pretty pleased, and it means he can get stuck into his rehab pretty quickly."

While Brennan's loss is a blow, initial fears of up to 12 weeks on the sidelines were unfounded with Voss hopeful he can push to return in as little as three weeks given the right response from his injured ankle in the coming days. 

Voss ruled Mitch Clark (groin) out of Saturday night's game leaving his ruck fortunes resting solely on the shoulders of Matthew Leuenberger.

With the imposing, three-pronged tall attack of Geelong coming to town, the Lions will be bolstered by Matt Maguire, who returns from suspension, while Joel Patfull (hamstring) and Daniel Merrett (hamstring) will need to prove their fitness in the week's main training session.

After making the AFL world sit up and take notice with a barnstorming 4-0 start to the season, Voss said there was enough evidence to suggest his side was capable of snapping its losing run despite the reigning premiers carrying good form into the contest.

"It's not so much about the opposition this week, it's about how we present ourselves," he said. "Our willingness to be able to fight our way through is something we've got to be able to show and we can't become a victim of that [losing streak].

"We know that the things that we did in the first month were very good things that we were doing as a team and we know that will measure up against some pretty good opposition.

"Our challenge is can we replicate that based on what the opposition lets us do? At this point in time I can't answer that categorically because we've got a very good opponent to play, but I'm confident the players are approaching it in the right manner."