After stunning highly-fancied Collingwood with a superb fightback for a thrilling draw last week, the Saints' performance in Saturday's grand final replay provided a stark contrast.
Despite his obvious disappointment, Lyon was unbowed after the 56-point defeat that ensured his club's premiership drought would stretch to 44 years.
"We certainly acknowledge that we need to get better and, to quote Winston Churchill, 'Never, never, never give up'," Lyon said.
"There's no recriminations out of this I don't think. I think we acknowledge that we give extraordinary effort and we've got a strong system, but ultimately that fell short.
"In simple terms we need to improve both the talent and the system and continue to give that level of effort consistently to keep knocking on the door.
"We're not going to give up and concede because St Kilda Football Club is a great club and that's our charter - to improve.
"Ultimately we've come close and obviously it hurts falling short, but I have no alternative and the players have no alternative but to not give up and keep working to improve."
After weathering an early storm, Lyon bemoaned his side's inability to make the most of its opportunities in a resurgent second quarter, but gave credit to the Pies who he said were clearly the best team of the year.
But with the disappointment of a second grand final defeat, Lyon was already looking to 2011 to ensure a better outcome.
"Clearly our skill level needs to get better, we need to find some talent and we need to tighten up our system," he said, adding youth already at the club would be given more opportunities.
"I think Collingwood has built on, in a sense, the team defence that we had in place in '09 and mark two is a better model. I think all clubs will be trying to find mark three.
"I think the hope is how quickly you can turn it around and improve people and systems and ratchet it up a little bit."
Having dealt with all manner of issues - both on and off the field - on the back of losing to the Cats in last year's decider, Lyon paid tribute to the mental strength of his players to be able to work their way back into a grand final.
He conceded the loss to the Pies would leave some mental scars, but backed the club to fight through the pain.
"We're professionals, we've got elite players, elite leaders and the club's under really good stewardship so we're not just going to fade away here," he said.
"We're going to do the work. Certainly we acknowledge there is some challenge. I mean it's a significant event and we all know when you lose family members or there are significant professional things that go wrong for you, there's a process that you go through.
"You're going to have anger, you're going to have frustration, you're going to have denial, you're going to be sad and eventually you're going to bottom out and give it meaning then you're going to drive forward.
"We'll deal with that. That's the process in all significant events in your life whether it's professional or a personal relationship or whatever you want to term it. That's what's going to occur now and if you get stuck on any one of those things, well you'll be seeing a therapist 20 years down the track."
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