CHRIS Fagan was proud of the comeback, but the Brisbane Lions coach wasn't sugarcoating Saturday night's loss to Essendon, describing it as one that got away. 

In his own quietly stated way, Fagan was fuming at his team's second-quarter performance, where they conceded a 42-point deficit to the Bombers. 

Essendon kicked eight successive goals at one stage.

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The Lions hit the front in the opening minutes of the final term before fading again, but Fagan couldn't cop the second term.

"We got smacked up in contested possessions and clearances in the second quarter," he said.

"We won both those areas for the game but in the second quarter it was a disaster for us. 

"There wasn’t much tackling in the game in the first half, and we wanted that (tackling), but we didn’t get it so those two things combined led to that second quarter. 

"Our players are really disappointed about that because we came to the game tonight with a really high expectation that we could actually get out there and win that game and we didn’t.

"We aim to win every time that we play. We didn’t get the job done tonight. 

"To a degree, I’m not being disrespectful to Essendon, but we've only got ourselves to blame."

Fagan said most of the problems came from centre clearances and defensive transition. 

The third-quarter turnaround was stark, with the Lions laying 24 tackles (after just 21 in the first two terms) and winning the clearance count 15-8.

WATCH Chris Fagan's full media conference

"We need to become better when our bodies get tired," Fagan said.

"We just need to learn how to play a little bit more composed and get some uncontested marks and take the sting out of the game.

"That’s a learning for us. 

"Don’t get me wrong, I was proud of the way that we fought back in the third quarter.

"It was a fantastic effort, but if we want to become a really good team we can't put ourselves in that position.

"It’s very, very hard to play with the effort required to catch back up again and then go with it."