JOURNALIST: “Was that your most disappointing performance for the season?”

Paul Roos: “Oh no, no, not by a long way.”

It was – not surprisingly – a clear, rationale and correct response by Roos in his post-match media conference following Melbourne’s 63-point loss to Fremantle at Darwin’s TIO Stadium on Saturday night.

In fairness to the journo, the fact that it was Melbourne’s second biggest loss for the season meant that it could’ve been the team’s most disappointing defeat for the year, given the significant strides made by Roos’ Demons in 2014.

But in the bigger picture context, Roos was spot on.

“For us, we got a lesson from a really good team, and they do what they do really well over and over and over again,” he said.

“But we got beaten by 93 points by West Coast [in round two] and had a couple of really bad games earlier in the year.

“I think you’ve got to respect what they do – they’re a very, very professional footy team and they’re the Grand Final team from last year and we were the 17^th team from last year.”

On that performance alone, Roos was asked if it was a step back.

“Step back or step forward? We try and improve every week. We probably didn’t improve this week. Did we improve on last week? Probably not,” he said.

“But the story of our season is just our inability to compete over and over and over again. I think they’re (Fremantle) the benchmark team in doing that.

“At times, they don’t play scintillating football … it’s really hard to score against them and they just grind you down. It’s a really good brand of footy – a brand of footy that took them to a Grand Final last year – and they’ll probably go close again this year.”

Make no mistake, Fremantle is an outstanding team.

Roos summed up his opposition by saying Fremantle was an “extremely predictable” team, yet “that’s what makes them such a good side”. 

The Purple Haze has now won seven matches in a row and is primed to challenge for its inaugural AFL premiership in 2014.

Its list is positioned beautifully too for a tilt at the flag, given it has the most experienced list in the competition, based on age and matches combined. Remember, Melbourne is in the bottom four in those areas in the competition, but has arguably surpassed expectation from a statistical perspective this year.

For the record, on the weekend, Fremantle fielded a team with 860 more games experience – 2,434 matches to 1,574 – and a team almost two years older.

Add to the fact it has an outstanding coach, talented list, the physical/mental attributes and system/structure, and it’s no wonder Fremantle produced the type of performance it did against Melbourne.

And although the Demons have the premiership coach ticked off, they are still in the early stages of building a list and system for the future – even though the Dees have shown considerable advancement from where they were. It’s fair to say a case could be made that Melbourne has already exceeded expectations in 2014, given its coming off its fifth worst season since it became a foundation VFL/AFL club in 1897.

But Roos won’t rest on what he’s achieved and overseen so far. He’s impatient for his success and wants his side to keep pushing the boundaries – even if he’s realistic enough to understand where his side sits opposed to Fremantle at the moment.

“The system that Ross [Lyon] implemented at St Kilda and [has now] implemented at Freo is a great system. We’ve seen that, but you’ve got to have certain players that can play the system and they have,” Roos said.

“They’ve got some seriously talented players ... they’re able to break the game open in those little moments, because their talent comes to the fore – whether it’s a [Nathan] Fyfe mark or a [Hayden] Ballantyne snap or [Michael] Barlow gets off from half-forward, so that’s where the talent comes into it.

“A lot of it starts around the structures and they’ve got players that are disciplined and play for each other and play for the team and then their talent rises … I think it’s structure and talent and that’s pretty powerful.”

Despite the frustration of the loss, Roos suggested his team will come away with the stark reality of where it needs to get to, when competing against the cream of the crop in the competition.

“Because of the way they play, they’re such a difficult team to beat. We’re a 17^th [team on the ladder] that’s trying to get better every week, but we constantly see they’re (Fremantle) such a competitive team,” he said.

“They do the basic things well over and over and over again. That’s why they’re going to be there at the end of the year right in the thick of it. I’ve got enormous respect for the way they play. We just couldn’t compete with them in large periods. When we did, we missed goals from 10 metres out.

“It makes it really difficult and you have to do everything right to be able to beat them. That says a lot about where they’re at and for our guys, it’s a real wake up call to how far away [we are] from being anywhere near as good as that.”

Maybe it was just the timely reminder needed in Melbourne’s journey.