BRISBANE has strung five wins together on the bounce and surged into the top four, but coach Craig Starcevich is of the belief his side can make a grand final from outside the double chance. The statement came following Brisbane’s dismantling of Essendon by 38 points, which funnily enough is the Lions’ average winning margin during the past month and a bit.

Since going down to North Melbourne in Round 5 to slip to 2-3 in the season, the Lions have been able to pass every challenge comfortably, with the five consecutive wins guaranteeing Brisbane a spot in a sixth straight finals series. The two-time reigning grand finalist is primed for another tilt at going deep in November, but Starcevich said gaining the double chance was not the “be all and end all”.

“Given that we only have a 12-week home and away season, to play another four in finals is not a huge ask by comparison to a men’s season, but we obviously don’t get the bye before finals so there’s no freshening up,” he said.

“To play all four wouldn’t really bother us too much I don’t think, but if you can score yourself a home prelim, I think that’s what everyone’s going for so if you can finish top four, win your first final which we’ve done the last couple of years that’s the best way in. But it might not work out that way and it doesn’t really matter to be honest.”

The Lions are having to shuffle around some players in a bid to cover recent injuries, losing Breanna Koenen and then pre-game Courtney Hodder, of which the latter forced a surprise debut for first-year player Claudia Wright. Starcevich said the likes of Charlotte Mullins, Lily Postlethwaite and Shanae Davison were “Swiss army knives” in the way they could flip between lines.

“It’s nice having those people in your group that you can throw around a bit. Ideally, you want a settled group as well by the same token. We shored up defence first and then wanted to keep our run through the middle off our wings and I thought Sophie Peters helped us enormously again with ground level pressure forward.

“I don’t think we lost too much pressure in the front half without Courtney so we still landed 16 tackles in forward 50. I think that’s decent to lock the ball in that part of the ground, but there was a bit of shuffling that needed to be done.”

As for Wright, Starcevich said the debutant “did fantastically well” and that she was one of those players whose game rose with the level she was at which showed on the weekend.

“Just the way she’s come through her junior career, she’s very clean, sees the game really well, makes good decisions and executes well,” he said. “There’s a lot of things to her game that are actually in place already. Work rate and understanding AFLW habits those sort of things are probably are a work in progress, but that’s what you expect from an 18/19 year-old.

“For her to come in today at late notice is a real credit to her, she looked sure with her decision making and anything that needed contest that needed killing in the air she did that as well. She looked really good.”

Looking at the recent form, Starcevich said there was still learnings to be taken from the games, but he could not be “too disappointed” given the comfortable margins.

“I mean we’ve gone five weeks in a row now where we’re hovering around the six-seven goal margin per game so from that point of view you can’t be too disappointed,” he said.

“But tricky conditions today, I think the opposition only scored two points after quarter time so that’s good from our point of view. We could have slowed down in front half and had some better looks but wasn’t to be given the nature of the game and the conditions a little bit. All things considered, we were pretty happy with that given we had the late out with one of our better players.”

Brisbane has a massive clash with second placed Melbourne before taking on 17th placed Collingwood in the final round of the season.