TOM McDonald has praised the backline’s ability to hold Fremantle to just eight goals in Saturday night’s 32-point win at TIO Stadium.

McDonald, who was one of Melbourne’s best with 31 disposals, said the new-look defence was starting to take shape – and also become a flexible unit. And considering Melbourne has a young team, with an exciting game plan, it has been most encouraging.

In fact, Melbourne’s defence is comparable to last year – it has conceded an average of 14.13 per game this season as opposed to 14.11 per game in 2015. And when you take into account that scoring has been higher across the competition this season, it has been a good effort, given the youthfulness of players such as Jayden Hunt, Oscar McDonald and Mitch White down back. (For the record, Melbourne has also upped its average score per match from 10.10 in 2015 to 14.10 this year.)

But McDonald said it was important that Melbourne evolved its overall team defence for the future.

“The backline did a good job … we were really happy,” he told Melbourne TV.  

“That’s something we’ve tried to work on this year, being super flexible on their (the opposition’s) main key forward or ruckman.

“[For example], at times, I’m going to have to swap with Neville Jetta, and Neville Jetta is going to have to play on [Matthew] Pavlich and I’m going to have to go on [Hayden] Ballantyne.

“We expect that Nev will do the job on Pavlich, when he’s on him and then I’ll do it on Ballantyne, when it’s my time to go. Sometimes you get found out, but in general that flexibility allows us to help the team more often than not.”

McDonald said Melbourne was pleased with its overall performance, except the third term, which was the only quarter it lost to Freo.

“We were really pleased with our footy as a whole team, bar maybe our third quarter,” he said.

“I think we were just a bit lackadaisical as defenders.

“We probably dropped off a little bit in the contest … so it was probably the whole team that just dropped off five per cent and they went up five per cent and that was the difference.

“The good thing was we had the lead and we were able to hold that in the last quarter.”

McDonald also praised his side’s forwards with Jesse Hogan (four goals), Jack Watts (three) and Dean Kent (three) contributing 10 of the 12 goals.

“The biggest thing was they got the rewards and kicked the goals at the end,” he said.

“They put the hard work in.”