COACH Paul Roos assesses all 44 players at Melbourne’s midway stage of the 2015 season. In the second of a four-part series, he looks at James Harmes, Jesse Hogan, Jeremy Howe, Jayden Hunt, Mark Jamar, Neville Jetta, Matt Jones, Nathan Jones, Jay Kennedy-Harris, Dean Kent and Max King.

James Harmes: Harmesy is a young player who is really learning. What I really like about James is that he’s starting to really listen and learn and his improvement has been good. He’s starting to understand both sides of the ball – offensively and defensively – but he needs to continue to improve in the back half of the season.

Jesse Hogan: The thing I love about Jesse is his competitiveness and he’s got a great work rate. If you’ve got those two, then you can keep working through games. As a young player does, he goes through lulls in games, but he allows himself to get back into contests, because he works so hard and he’s such a good competitor.

Jeremy Howe: Howey has been a little bit up-and-down, but when he’s on and when his commitment to the defensive side of the game is on – as we saw with his game against Geelong – he’s a very good player. I genuinely said to him after that game against Geelong that it was the best game of footy I’ve seen of a player without touching the ball in the first half. That was because he was involved in the game. He was chasing and tackling, and was bringing the ball to ground. When he does that, he’s a very good player.

Jayden Hunt: Hunty has had quite a few injuries to deal with in the first half of the season and really all we’re looking from him at the moment is to get on the park consistently. We really want him to listen to the coaches and use his speed, when he plays. He needs to use that because that’s his greatest asset – and he needs to get back to playing some consistent football.

Mark Jamar: Mark probably wasn’t out of form, when he got dropped. It was really that the other ruckmen were playing so well. The good thing with Mark is that he’s responding well at VFL level. We still think he’s got a role to play with the footy club and he just needs to play really good football and force his way back into the team.

Neville Jetta: Nev unfortunately missed that month with concussion. I think we’ve seen how much we’ve missed him. He’s one of the best small defenders now in the competition. He’s hard and tough, and we’re probably seeing him in the past couple of weeks getting back to some fantastic form.

Matt Jones: With Matty, it’s more that other guys have really stepped up, which has meant he’s played more in the VFL this year. He’s still playing good footy at VFL level and he’s playing pretty good footy when he gets a chance at AFL level. He just needs to continue to work on his game and continue to improve, and not let other guys go past him, because he does show he has some real AFL qualities.

Nathan Jones: Nathan is a great student of the game. He was probably disappointed with some of his games early in the season, but I think his past three games have been as good as I’ve seen him play. His commitment now to two-way running, running hard to pick up his man and running hard offensively is as good as I’ve seen him play.

Jay Kennedy-Harris: Jay started off the year pretty positively. We saw what we could get with him, with his speed and endurance, and when he gets up the ground and then gets back. He then had a groin injury, so now it’s about getting him back, and hopefully playing some good VFL footy and then getting him back in the senior team.

Dean Kent: Dean was another one we felt started the season really well. He showed his speed and kicked some really critical goals. He made some really good tackles to set the scene against Richmond early in the season, and then got injured in that game. He’s been out for a fair while, but we’re looking forward to getting him back later in the season.

Max King: Maxy has been slow to develop, but to his credit his last five or six weeks have been good. I’ve watched him play a number of times in the Development League and you could see the real talent that he had. Then he kicked five goals in his first VFL game for the season. He just needs to keep being consistent – on and off the field.