Brisbane coach Justin Leppitsch might not have wanted to say it but some how, some way his young Lions managed to get ahead of themselves after one solitary win.

A team that won just four games last season and dropped the first three of this campaign by an average margin of 55 points got carried away by their performance in last week’s local derby win over Gold Coast.

That misguided sense of their place in the AFL pecking order manifested itself in a 53-point thumping at the hands of the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night.

“If I say that then that’s the headline, isn’t it? That we got ahead of ourselves?” Leppitsch replied when asked if that might have been a factor in the loss.

“It’s an old adage isn’t it? But I guess if you want to throw a label behind it.

“But when you’re learning the craft and learning how to win consistently there’s a lot of errors you make along the way … sometimes you shoot yourself in the foot, not just the opposition.

“We did a bit of both tonight.

“We meet after every week and there probably were some signs that we weren’t as well prepared as we were the week prior.”

The scoreboard damage could so easily have been worse, and probably should have been on the evidence of some key statistics.

The Dogs had 51 more contested possessions and went inside attacking 50 on 71 occasions to Brisbane’s meagre 31.

“The start of the game was actually ok … we were quite competitive,” Leppitsch said of the lopsided possession count.

“But halfway through the first quarter and onwards it just fell apart (at the stoppages) … they dominated.”

The night was further soured by injuries to Tom Cutler and Allen Christensen.

Cutler will spend some time on the sidelines after dislocating his left elbow, while Christensen suffered a concussion in a clash with teammate Stef Martin.