SENIOR assistant coach Simon Goodwin says 2015 was a year of genuine “improvement and progression” from its playing list.

Goodwin said it was clear to him that the club made strides throughout the year.

“We played in some really important character building wins– beating Geelong down at Simonds [Stadium], winning against Richmond in the first Anzac Eve game on Friday night footy, beating Bulldogs and GWS in last round,” he said at Melbourne’s annual general meeting at the MCG on Thursday.

“On the other hand, there were some frustrating periods of the year, where we didn’t meet our own expectations.

“We had 11 new players play for the football club with eight AFL debutants – six of these being first year players at the club.”

Goodwin said the importance on development had been a major focus in 2015.  

“It started with the appointments of [coaches] Brendan McCartney and Justin Plapp,” he said.

“These appointments allowed us to transform Casey into a development field for our players. At Casey, they are taught to play our brand of football. They are coached by Melbourne coaches on match day and are hearing the same message as the senior players do.

“The outcomes of this are that the players play when they are ready to perform at AFL level and we saw some really good examples of that this year with [James] Harmes, [Tom] McDonald and [Max] Gawn.

“We see this area as vital to our future success and our club will continue to invest and drive in the development and education of our playing group. It doesn’t just stop with the players, we believe developing the coaches and coaching the coaches is also a very important step as we continue along our journey as a footy club.”

Goodwin said the recent trade period had been strong and would show benefits in 2016.

“[Jake] Melksham, [Tomas] Bugg and [Ben] Kennedy have shown they can perform at AFL level, but are still at an age where they can develop and grow to become the best players they can for the football club,” he said.

“We were attracted to these players as they show  similar attributes in that they are competitive, have strong characters and all want to work hard to improve themselves and the team.

“In terms of our draftees, we were able to significantly improve our draft position during the trade period, which is a credit to Josh Mahoney and Todd Viney. The players we brought in are all talented, but as I mentioned earlier, we will need to develop and educate them, and give them the best possible environment to ensure they succeed as AFL players.”

Goodwin said the pre-season was tracking strongly, but he added that all clubs were making headway throughout the summer.

“The players have all been working hard on the track, but so has every club – so we are no different there,” he said.

“One of our focuses over the pre-season is to improve all three phases of our game style. We know the game is played in three phases – defensive, contest and offensive. To this point, we have been strategically building our game-style in layers over the past two years.

“We still need to ingrain many habits within our game-style and that’s what we’ve been working very hard on throughout the pre-season.

“We know to be a great football team we need to be good at all three phases of the game and that will be the challenge for us going forward.”

Overall, Goodwin said the club was “really encouraged with our progress made in 2015”.

“We have come a long way and although you didn’t see it every week on the field, we as coaches see it in meetings, we see it at training, and see the development our players are making, which excites us as coaches,” he said.

“But we are not content with just incremental improvement – we want our members to know that internally we are working as hard as we can to fast track our progress.

“We want to become better quicker and you should have faith that we are doing everything possible to achieve this.”