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BELL Park co-coach Ben Armstrong described the feeling from his side's preliminary final exit as brutal as he came to grips with the 27-point loss to Grovedale.
The Dragons looked in control for most of the day, particularly at three-quarter time when they led by 24 points.
But Grovedale piled on eight goals to nil to end Bell Park's finals campaign in devastating fashion.
"It's a pretty brutal finish to the year, our twos have gone out as well. So to have a finish to the year like that is pretty rough and pretty brutal," Armstrong said.
"It's a brutal game and if it doesn't go your way a lot of hard work goes out the door, but only one team wins.
"We aren't strangers to this feeling, we've been knocked out every year except for one."
The Tigers came back from the dead in the last quarter and Armstrong admitted his side didn't respond to the Grovedale assault.
"We made it pretty clear it was going to go to the wire and in the end it did, they just kept coming," he said.
"They got a run on and it was pretty difficult to combat.
"I thought our third quarter was really good, our workrate was really good, but then that fell away by five or 10 per cent and we got punished by them big time.
"They have some quality and their quality came to the fore in the last quarter."
The hurt and devastation was visible in the Bell Park rooms post-match, from Armstrong to his players and the supporters.
But the Dragons co-coach is confident his side will return in 2014 better for the experience.
"We thought if we kept our workrate up and kept persisting we would get the result but unfortunately it just didn't hit the levels," he said.
"Our guys will learn a lesson in persistence and workrate and what it takes to win a final because today we just didn't do enough to get the result."
