TOM McDonald says Melbourne’s 68-point loss to Fremantle at the MCG on Sunday was simply “deplorable”.

The in form defender was bitterly disappointed by the loss, even though his side went down to the red-hot and undefeated Fremantle.

“Even though we were competitive on the scoreboard up until three quarter-time, we were very lucky to be within five goals,” he told Dee TV.

“They (Fremantle) were playing pretty average for them and we were just deplorable.

“To be within five goals and not find something in the last quarter and dig in the game – it was the worst performance for the year by far. It was very disappointing.”

McDonald acknowledged some costly errors in front of goal – when Melbourne opened the last quarter with three behinds – hurt the home side. But he said it was far more than just missed opportunities on the scoreboard.  

“It’s costly because it’s a goal, but there were so many other things that could’ve … saved goals the other way,” he said.

“[Trying] to win the ball from the centre bounce was just deplorable and giving away terrible free kicks, free kicks down the field and 50-metre penalties – it was very ill-disciplined.

“[We didn’t] have a crack – it was a shocking game, shocking.”

McDonald said the Demons would review the game thoroughly, but quickly move onto next Saturday night’s clash against the Sydney Swans.

“We’ve got a short week, because we play on Saturday night against Sydney next week, so it’s only six days [away]. We’ll get the review out of the way tomorrow (Monday) and we’ll address all of the problems and what went wrong and see if we did anything well,” he said.

“Then we’ll hopefully forget that by [the end of] Monday and then put what we learned into training on Tuesday or Wednesday. Then [we’ll] have a tune-up on Thursday.

“By Tuesday or Wednesday we will have moved on from this weekend and Sydney will be the focus.”