COACH Paul Roos says Melbourne’s 36-point loss to St Kilda at Etihad Stadium on Sunday was “a continual reminder of where we’re at”.

Speaking post-match, Roos said the loss showed what could happen if his team didn’t play four quarters.

“As a team, if we drop off in team performance and we don’t have a lot of good players, it makes it really, really difficult,” he said.

“It was probably a bit of a false dawn when we got within 10 points in the last quarter, but it was on the back of really good individual efforts, but we didn’t have enough of those.

“We didn’t have enough individual efforts, which make up a team performance for us to be competitive for long enough.”

Roos said Melbourne’s best was “really, really good” but added that there was no margin for error.

“We didn’t have enough really good one on one efforts or the two v one. They just did it better than what we did,” he said.

Meanwhile, Roos said the ruck contest between Max Gawn and St Kilda’s Tom Hickey was an impressive one.

“He (Hickey) has had a terrific season. He’s going well. Max went forward and kicked a couple of goals, but they’ve (Gawn and Hickey) have had two really good contests this year,” he said.

“I just think his (Hickey) improvement this year has been pretty good and it’s really impressive. He had 14 contested possessions and his follow up was really good.

“I thought he was significant for St Kilda and Max probably lifted us a bit when he went forward.”