MIDFIELDER/forward Aaron vandenBerg says he feels a lot more settled entering his second season with Melbourne and is ready to take his game to the next level.

vandenBerg, who made an impressive start to his AFL career in 2015, despite an injury-interrupted year, said he felt positive entering 2016.

“[I just feel] a lot more comfortable,” he told Dee TV.

“It’s good to get a full pre-season under my belt and not being in rehab the whole time.

“[I’m] just working on little things that I think are going to take my game to another level, and also putting a lot of hard work into how we want to play and being a part of it.”

vandenBerg, who was one of Melbourne’s best in its NAB Challenge opener against Port Adelaide at Elizabeth last Saturday, said he got “lucky” with his fine checkside goal against the Power.

“Everyone likes a goal,” he said with a smile.

“It was a very good win. It was a little bit of a scratchy start to blow the cobwebs out, but it was good to get the victory in the end.  

“There has been a lot of hard work up until this point. A lot of the boys have been pretty excited to play and to get out there and implement what we’ve been doing all year. To [be able to] show that it stands up is really good and it gives us a lot of confidence.

“We’re well aware that it was a practice match and a NAB Challenge game and we’ve still got a lot of things we want to work on, but it’s good to see that a lot of the things we’ve been training are really starting to come out in the way we play.”

Looking ahead to Sunday’s clash against the Western Bulldogs at Craigieburn, vandenBerg said Melbourne was eager to continue its strong form.

“We’ll look at the Dogs and what we want to do. I can’t imagine we’ll change much – we’ll try and neglect what they do well and hopefully we’ll move the ball well and get another win, which would be nice.”