KEY defender Tom McDonald says it was “hard to really tell why we performed like that” after Melbourne was thrashed by a whopping 98 points at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

Speaking to Dee TV post-match, McDonald said he couldn’t understand why his side performed the way it did.  

“I’m a bit lost at the moment, so close after the game,” he said soon after the match.

“The first half was opposite to what I expected. I thought there would be a real fire [in the belly] to come out and start well after last week’s performance. After poor games previously, our week after has been really strong.

“We weren’t having a real crack in the first half and they smashed us and we were never going to come back from there.”

McDonald said Melbourne should’ve played like it did in the third quarter for the entire match, when it booted five goals to zip.

“It’s not anymore frustrating. It’s not any better – it’s how we should’ve played [from] the first [quarter],” he said.

“We’re not going to kick five goals zip every quarter, if we play that way, but we put ourselves in a position to win.

“But it didn’t really happen and I’m a bit lost [what to say] but I’m really disappointed.”

Having beaten the Bulldogs in a NAB Challenge in Ballarat earlier this year and in round eight by 39 points, McDonald said the Demons didn’t take them lightly this time around.

“I don’t think you can take a top four team lightly,” he said.

“They’re pretty strong and they’ve been playing some good footy, and when we played them early in the year, they were playing good footy as well. They’d just come off beating Sydney up there.

“I think we played a much better style of footy – our brand of footy – in the first game of the regular season and we just went away from that and tried to play the wrong way for us today.

“It took us until half-time to figure it out and the last quarter we just back to doing what we did at the start of the game.”