COACH Paul Roos says the belief of his team evaporates quicker than most other sides, given most of the Melbourne players has had little success.
Speaking at AAMI Park on Tuesday, Roos said “there was no question” that when the players are vulnerable in matches, they can quickly lose their confidence quickly, given the club has experienced a trying era since 2007.
“I think that absolutely happens and that’s something that we talk about – and how do you address that in game time?” he said.
“When you’ve lost so many games, it does evaporate pretty quickly and we’ve just got to get more resilient and we’ve got to give them (the players) tools to work in real time.”
Roos said the issues that arose from the match had been addressed, but the players needed to refocus on this Saturday’s clash against the West Coast Eagles at Patersons Stadium.
“We can talk about the negatives of the weekend and believe me, we’ve addressed those, but equally, the belief has got to come from within,” he said.
“They’ve got to believe in themselves. I believe in them. I’ve said it on a weekly basis – I believe in them. I think for the majority of the year, I’ve been really pleased with their performance, given where we’re coming from and where we want to get to.
“But the belief has to come from within and you have to believe when you step on the field in your own ability.”
Roos said he got some great advice from former Fitzroy star Mick Conlan as a player, which still resonates today.
“When I was captain of Fitzroy in 1989, I was going through a shocking patch of form and I remember we’d just finished having a shower and we were putting out kit on and he said ‘you’re not going that well’,” he said.
“He said ‘never, ever lose belief in yourself’. He said ‘I’ve had more bad games than good games’. That’s what Micky said. I said ‘I don’t think that’s true’. But he said ‘I never ever lost belief in my own ability’.
“I think that’s a really good message to our players. I think we’ve got a lot of ability in the club and we’ve proved that we can play some really good football, but they have to believe in themselves.”
Roos said last Sunday’s loss to GWS at the MCG stood out more as Melbourne had failed to have success since its most recent finals campaign in 2006.
“Collectively, we’re really disappointed – that’s the main message to the players,” he said.
“We’re in this thing together, but we’ve got to find out collectively why [it happened] after such a positive year … we can’t have those performances.
“You could argue all clubs have them. Geelong got beaten by 110 points by Sydney and St Kilda smashed Freo the other week, but it’s more glaring, when it’s a club like ours, because we feel like we’ve made some inroads.
“Take nothing away from the Giants, but probably the worst part of it was the fact that they were three [players] down. [GWS coach] Leon [Cameron] would acknowledge that at half-time they were staring down the barrel, so full credit to them.
“It was more the way we lost, rather than the fact that [heavy defeats] will always happen to teams – and we’ve seen it happen to good teams this year.”
Still, Roos believed his players had been “super brave this year”, given they were in games far more often.
“We’ve been in front 10 times and that’s the thing they’ve got to remember and we’ve got to remind them of … we’ve lost to Port twice [and once by two points] and the other by 20 points. We had two terrific games against the Bulldogs and [we were close] in six other games,” he said.
