COACH Neil Craig says he couldn’t fault Melbourne’s endeavour against the Brisbane Lions at TIO Stadium on Saturday night, but was adamant a disappointing second term cost it the game.

Speaking post-match, after Melbourne’s 19-point loss, Craig highlighted some key areas where his team fell away.  

“I haven’t got an issue with our effort and our commitment to the contest. The thing that let us down was our second quarter,” he said after the Lions kicked 5.1 to 1.4.

“There was some good play by Brisbane, but we were quite critical of ourselves in the second quarter, with some of our stoppage work and movements out of defence, where we turned the ball over really poorly. It resulted in strong momentum going back to Brisbane.

“But apart from the second quarter, there were some good signs for us to continue with.

“Brisbane is in good shape at the moment and they’ve played some good footy, so we got exposed a little bit, when we drop off in those areas. We’ll just keep driving hard and the guys will slowly improve in those areas.”

Craig was pleased with the return of Jack Viney (21 disposals), after eight weeks on the sidelines, and the continued good form of big man Jack Fitzpatrick (four goals) up forward and in the ruck.

He was also optimistic about Melbourne’s improved ruck stocks and its development.

“I thought [Fitzpatrick] was very good tonight … the other really pleasing thing at times was that Jack Watts also did some ruck work and I thought he did it quite well,” Craig said.

“Our [ruck] stocks are really good, but you need plenty of them, because it’s a really tough position to play and they face in the vicinity of 80 to 100 contested balls in the air every week, with stoppage work. So it’s a demanding position.

“You can never have too many big men. In actual fact, they are so important the umpires wait until they get back to the centre square, before they start the game – that’s how important they are.”