Melbourne coach Neale Daniher saw his side's NAB Cup defeat at the hands of Hawthorn coming from a fair way out on Sunday, but he wasn't particularly fussed with the outcome.Despite holding a 12-point lead at the last break, Daniher felt his undermanned side had run its race and still drew plenty of positives from the hitout after the Demons eventually went down by four goals."We came into the game probably lacking the (midfield) rotations and we sort of knew that, but while we were fresh and our onballers were fresh, I thought we controlled the game. At the end of the day we just ran out of legs," was Daniher's frank assessment."In the second half their midfield depth probably got the better of us, we knocked up and they just started to get the ball away from stop plays. We sort of controlled that until halfway through the third, but with their freshness through the middle they were able to control that part of the game."We just fell in a hole probably halfway through the third quarter into the last quarter."A couple of nine-pointers at the end of the third put a lot of pressure on us from a scoreboard point-of-view, but the signs were there … that we weren't going to be able to match their legs with the team that we had in today."Daniher saw some pleasing signs from young trio Simon Buckley, Danny Hughes and James Frawley, but said the Dees' midfield will soon benefit from the returns of Travis Johnstone, Brock McLean, Brent Moloney and Aaron Davey who are all likely inclusions for next week's practice match.