CO-CAPTAIN Nathan Jones says Saturday’s thrilling three-point win over the Adelaide Crows at the Adelaide Oval was a significant boost for the club’s belief.

Speaking on Triple M radio on Monday, Jones said “it was a terrific win” and “a real confidence booster for the footy club”.

“It [was] a little bit of reward for hard work for where we’ve come from,” he said.

“For me personally, it’s pretty foreign and for a lot of the boys that have been around the footy club, it’s pretty foreign to get up on Monday morning and head in [to the club] following a win.

“It’s good to already have two on the board at this stage of the year and it would be nice to have more, but we’ve just got to be patient at the moment and I’m going to take it as it comes.

“We’ve got to face up again this week … and it’s a real opportunity for us to back up a great performance on the weekend to try and get two in a row and really kick start our year and continue to build that confidence in the group.”

Jones said he had experienced plenty of people in the football fraternity who were right behind the reemergence of Melbourne.

“You speak to a lot of people and a lot of people say that Melbourne is their second team. For us being down so long, a lot of people want to see us improve and see us be competitive and that’s what our fans want and that’s what the footy community want,” he said.

“We’ve worked really hard on that and the group’s expectations are now that we want to win games of footy and we think we’re good enough to win games of footy. There’s no doubt we go into every week thinking ‘it’s another opportunity’.

“I think we’re pretty real about where we’re at and we’ve still got a way to go to, particularly to reach the teams that are right at the top of the ladder.

“We’ll take the wins as they come and build the confidence from there. I think there is some real belief starting to build and we’ve just got to continue the consistency and hopefully we can bring that more often than not.”