Reds sketch attacking blueprint

Reds boss Ewen McKenzie believes that his team's high-tempo attacking style is the right way to go against the British and Irish Lions.

The Queensland side showed plenty of intent in their 22-12 defeat to the tourists in Brisbane, and outscored the Lions by two tries to one.

McKenzie said that although there were too many mistakes made, their performance showed what it takes to put the Lions under pressure.

"What we did do though was present one way of playing against them. We thought it worked and that we did a pretty fair job.

"We got a couple of tries but needed a few more in the end. If we were a little more clinical and had a bit more experienced in a few moments things may have been different.

"But I can't say I am unhappy. We spilt a lot of blood out there. We had ideas of how we wanted to play and by and large we did that. We kept the tempo of the game up and I think it put them under pressure. In the end they were good enough to prevail," he added.

Flyhalf Quade Cooper produced one of his best efforts for Queensland this year with the captain's execution of the ball-in-hand gameplan implemented by the Reds almost producing an unlikely upset.

"I think we really did our club proud and our state hopefully. All these people who turned out in this rainy weather to watch a good game of rugby, we hope they got their money worth," Cooper said.

"We wanted to run them around as much as possible. They are a very big side so we tried to keep the tempo of the game up. We tried to put pressure on them by moving them around and sticking to what we are best at, which is running teams off their feet.

"I'm very pleased with the performance of the team. We left everything out there on the park and the effort of the boys in attack and defence should be commended.  For us, this is a great building block for us moving forward.

"There were a lot of guys who normally don't get as much game time playing against a great side like the Lions. Everyone got great experience out of it. For us, with the Super Rugby Finals hopefully ahead, it will put us in a good position," he added.