COACH Paul Roos says Melbourne’s past two weeks have been has good as he’s seen at the club.

Although his side went down in round three – it narrowly lost to North Melbourne, now the only undefeated team in the competition, by five points at Blundstone Arena – Roos said his team had achieved two strong weeks.

His comments came after Melbourne’s 35-point win over Collingwood at the MCG on Sunday.  

“It’s been two really good weeks – probably the best two we’ve had back-to-back [in my time at the club], even though we lost last week,” he said.

“We played a top four team and started to see the type of footy we want to play more regularly in week one, three and four.

“It’s early in the season, but when you’ve got a lot of young players playing – to see them play like that for the second week in a row is really pleasing.”

Roos stressed the importance of patience and understanding with a young team.  

“There were 15 or 16 guys who played 60 games or less, so we are a very young team,” he said.

“For us to be able to do that and start well with Collingwood under enormous pressure all week – the [Magpies] responded incredibly in the second and third quarter and put us under a lot of pressure.

“In the last quarter, everyone was really tired, so it was really a turnover game. We were just hoping that they’d make a few more [mistakes] than we did. In the end, we were able to hang on.

“It was really important for the Melbourne supporters to see what’s happening and understand where we’re at – and to come and see an encouraging performance.”

Roos indicated he had been pleased with all but one performance this year – Melbourne’s round two loss to Essendon at the MCG.

But given Melbourne won all three NAB Challenge matches and has two wins from four rounds, Roos said it was a positive start. And he maintained that Essendon wasn’t as disastrous as many predicted.

“We saw Essendon play really well against Geelong and I always thought Essendon was going to be way better than what people thought they’d be,” he said.

“Certainly we feel it was a game we should’ve won, but I don’t think you can take anything away from what [Essendon coach] Woosha (John Worsfold) is doing and what they’re doing and how they present on a weekly basis.

“Next week is about us getting ready to play Richmond and we don’t have a huge margin for error. We’re young and we need to prepare really hard and work really hard during the week to front up again next week.”