AND so another season comes to end – at least for the Melbourne Football Club.

It’s been some ride.

Progress has been made – undeniably. No team can expect miracles coming off just two wins and its fifth worse season since it became a foundation VFL/AFL club in 1897.

A poor August marred another otherwise positive season of improvement for the club, which included four wins over Carlton, Adelaide, Richmond and Essendon – the latter two progressing through to September. It was competitive for much of the season, until the backend became an issue.

It was far from ideal, but far better than 2013.  

Still, there is a long way to go.

And that was acknowledged firmly by coach Paul Roos, who made his intentions known about Melbourne’s 2014/15 pre-season campaign, following his side’s 30-point loss to North Melbourne at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night.

“It’s going to be a bloody hard pre-season – there’s no question about that. It’s going to be very, very hard and that’s really what we spoke about after the game,” he said.

Roos said “about eight” of his charges who played against the Kangaroos didn’t have pre-seasons, which impacted them late in the season.

“They start to get tired naturally, which makes it harder against teams like the Kangas, who are going in to finals pretty well prepared and they’re pretty seasoned teams,” he said.

“If you want to be a really good footy team, you have to run two ways. Our guys are running fit, but they’re not match fit.

“And that’s what we really need to concentrate on a lot during the off-season.”

In terms of upcoming list management decisions, Roos also left no one in doubt about his intentions.

“Every player is tradable in my view,” he said.

Roos said being upfront with his players about that notion was nothing new. He said it was the same when he was coach of the Sydney Swans. But he was determined Melbourne will “try and get the best list” next year and he would explore all “avenues to do that”.

“You can only be as aggressive as other teams let you. You can’t trade with yourself, so it’s always an interesting period. Some clubs are easy to deal with and some clubs aren’t. We just want to improve our list,” he said.

“Dom Tyson – my hats off to him – he’s had an outstanding season in a whirlwind of criticism and I’m still trying to find that unnamed recruiter [who criticised the trade in the Herald Sun earlier in the year]. I might try and track him down during trade week and see if I can find him.

“What he’s (Tyson) done on the back of no pre-season is outstanding and he was fantastic again [against North Melbourne], so if we can add that talent to our list, we’re going to get better.

“We’ll just try all avenues, but it is difficult with free agency as well, because you may lose a high quality player, so there are all those challenges.”

Looking further towards the NAB AFL Draft in late November, Roos said the midfield was “still the area we need to improve”.

“My view on drafting is you always draft midfielders, because it’s so much harder to assess talls in the TAC Cup and around the country, because generally the bloke who is 201cm is playing on a bloke who is 190cm and about 15kg lighter,” he said.

And he was certain Melbourne “probably had the No.1 draft pick” with young-gun key forward Jesse Hogan still yet to make his AFL debut, due to a back injury this year.  

“That is a real bonus for us going into the season – we haven’t had Jesse all year – but we don’t want to put too much pressure on him. Maybe it’s the best thing that could happen. He’s got a man’s body now … he looks like an AFL player,” he said.

“He hasn’t had the pressure of a Jack Watts or a Jack Trengove or a [Tom] Scully – he’s had a year, which he’d rather forget, but it might turn out to be the best thing, because we end up with a ‘No.1 draft pick’ going into next season, who is two seasons into his craft and has played one year last year at Casey.

“He’s done a lot of work with weights and stability – so we’re more than aware we’ve got a high quality, young forward coming into the team. He’ll have to work his way into the team, and he understands that.”

In regards to more immediate issues, Roos was also probed whether key defender/forward James Frawley had played his last match for Melbourne, given he was an unrestricted free agent and there had been constant speculation about his future.

“I really don’t know to be honest. James has been terrific. He’s been engaged in the group and there have been no signs from me that he’s put the cue in the rack,” he said.

“He’s been really good around the club and he’s trained hard and he’s played to the last minute – and that’s all I can ask. If he does leave, we wish him well and if he doesn’t, we’ll be rapt for him to stay.

“We’ll continue discussions with him, but I’ve certainly had no complaints and I really don’t know either way.”

It all points to yet another fascinating off-season for Melbourne as it continues its second part of the journey under Roos into 2015.

There is still some hell of a ride to go.

But it’ll be worth jumping on board to see how it travels.