JAKE Melksham has urged the Melbourne faithful to stick with the side and turn out in force for Tuesday night’s Anzac Day Eve match against Richmond at the MCG.

On the back of Melbourne’s 67-point loss to Hawthorn at the MCG last Sunday, Melksham hoped the red and blue fans would help create another 80,000-plus attendance for the clash between the Demons and Tigers. 

“I think you’ve just got to stick behind us. It’s early on in the season and there is still a lot of footy to be played,” he told Melbourne Media. 

“I think last year Richmond got beaten twice by 10 goals-plus over in Adelaide and another time at Etihad [Stadium] by St Kilda, so these things happen, although we don’t want them to.

“It’s happened and we have to deal with it now, and it’s reality and we’ve faced it, and now we’re going to move on to next week against Richmond and hopefully we play some good footy.”

Melksham said the coaches highlighted several areas to implement against Richmond, following its match review of the Hawthorn shocker.

“We didn’t play the way that we wanted to and the education around that was really helpful,” he said.

“We just wanted to be harder to play against. In the second half, we didn’t play to our strengths and we didn’t really fight hard with the Melbourne brand of footy we want to play.

“We leaked a fair few goals and we thought our effort was lacking in some areas of the ground, so that was the one thing we took out of the education.”

Melksham said it was a balancing act between not training too much and doing too little in the lead-up to Tuesday night.

But he added that the players were “itching” to get out there on Tuesday night and put on a good show for the Melbourne fans.