It was all over at quarter-time when the Lions shot out to an early lead through three goals to Sabrina Frederick-Traub in their 40 point drubbing of the Giants.

By fulltime she had added another goal to her tally. 

The Giants loss ended their grand final aspirations and they simply had no answer to the Lions running game during the first half of football.

Lions coach Craig Starcevich told The Women’s Game his team had been a grinding team all season but their best attacking football was on display during the match.

“I don’t know where it came from, to be honest, other than the team had a real intent to hang in the contest and things we wanted to do in the forward set-up and move the ball quickly and just one of those freakish quarters where most things go right,” he said.

“People having shots in pockets and they were going in and all sorts of things.”

Starcevich said Frederick-Traub had been great up-front all year without necessarily showing on the scoreboard but it all came together for her on the night.

“To come away with four straight, I think she had 17 touches at half-time so, yeah she was an enormous target and when she’s playing like that she’s pretty hard to stop,” he said.

For Giants coach Alan McConnell, it was a disappointing result but not his player's efforts.

“We lose contested ball by 19 and we’re five goals down at quarter-time and on the back of that, they’re able to just then roll players back and defend a lead,” he said.

Even though he mentioned his team played five poor quarters during the season and no team can do that if they want to play finals football over a seven-week competition, he said there won’t be wholesale changes to the roster next year.

“I trust we won’t be starting again and we’ve certainly come a long way, we need to tinker a few things, but not a lot, time will tell there,” McConnell said.

The fairytale is over for this season but the Giants will be proud of in their progression from last year’s wooden spoons.

As for the Lions, Starcevich said they now play the waiting game and his team will watch other match results to see if they make it through to the AFLW grand final.

“Well tomorrow night the Bulldogs-Melbourne game is the first thing we need to watch and tick off,” he said.

“Yeah sit there and cross your fingers it all goes your way and the right through to the last game on Sunday, we have to watch the mighty Magpies get across the line, so we’ll all have our scarves on for that one.”