TOM McDonald says 2016 was an “outstanding” year for Melbourne’s emerging backline.

McDonald – who could now be considered a veteran of Melbourne’s backline – said the addition of youngsters like Jayden Hunt and Josh Wagner, along with brother Oscar, had brought about a significant shift.

“To have Hunty [Jayden Hunt], [Josh] Wagner, Oscar [McDonald] and those sorts of guys come in and play big minutes and a lot of games has been really important for the team,” he told Melbourne TV.

“You see how successful they started to get towards the end of the year, especially Hunty and Oscar who had really good back halves of the year.

“How much that will do for them going into next year and going forward, being able to play against good teams and against big opponents, will be super important.”

Looking ahead to next season, McDonald said any number of Melbourne’s youngsters could have a break-out year in 2017.

“I think Angus Brayshaw will bounce back from a tough year this year with his injuries and head knocks so will be a good to see him get a clear run through the pre-season into next year,” he said.

“[Christian] Petracca will be the same – even this year, he was interrupted at the start. I think Oscar and Hunty will take another step.”

With six AFL seasons now under his belt, McDonald said Melbourne’s inconsistency would continue to be the primary focus for improvement in 2017.

“Being so young, there are so many things that we need to improve but [the main thing] we really need to improve on is our consistency from week-to-week,” he said.

“The issue is that in our in worst performances, we can’t find a way to turn it around if we’re going really poorly early in the game.

“But I think that the physical maturity that’s going to come from a young team, they’re going to have more pre-seasons, more weights, more game plan training, more understanding of how we want to play.

“You need the pre-season to actually ingrain what we want to do so the pre-season will be super important, not just for the physical games but understanding how we’re going to translate that into play.”