COACH Paul Roos says round one should be built up – as it’s the start of the premiership season – but in reality, it is no more important than winning any other home and away match for the year.
Speaking at AAMI Park on Monday, Roos said he simply wants his team to produce a strong four quarter performance against the Gold Coast Suns at the MCG this Saturday.
“Round one’s always more significant because it’s the start of the season, but once you get to the end of the year, it’s no more significant than round two, three, four or five,” he said.
“It’s just starting off the season really consistently. We were up and down too much last year. We had some good patches and some bad patches within games, as well as runs of weeks.
“So for us, it’s [about playing] a consistent brand of football for 120 minutes and if it’s good enough to win – we’ll win and if it’s not, then we’ve got to do a better job the following week.
“Round one gets built up a bit, as it should. Everyone loves the footy and it’s coming back … Thursday night, between Richmond and Carlton and that’ll be built up as a huge game.
“We just want to play good footy – that’s the main thing this week.”
Roos said he was not worried about Melbourne’s most recent performance – a two-point loss to Essendon in the NAB Challenge. He added that the NAB Challenge couldn’t be compared to the season proper.
“The coaching staff is really good at analysing the NAB Challenge for what it is,” he said.
“Really you’ve got to look at them over a three week period, rather than just the one game or one quarter, because everyone is trying to do different things.
“There is very little about opposition and there is not as much stability in each team – particularly the teams we’ve played against Essendon.
“We didn’t spend any time on Essendon or the Bulldogs, because they had a young team as well. So it’s [about] just picking up [on] themes and making sure if there is a bad theme, you correct it.
“Probably our best game was our first game because we played Freo at almost full strength and we had a pretty good team and they had a really good team in.”
