COACH Paul Roos says Melbourne’s spread of goalkickers against the Gold Coast Suns was a significant highlight of its 73-point win at Metricon Stadium on Saturday.

Melbourne had 13 individual goalkickers, which resulted in 24 goals, and Roos said that came about due to an even contribution from the entire team.   

“When we get good contributions from leaders, and all the way down, we think we’re a good team,” he said post-match.

“Today was an example – we spread the ball around a bit … and that resulted in 13 goalkickers.”

Roos said he was pleased with how his side went about its game right from the start, even though it trailed by 11 points at quarter-time.

“We were happy with the way that we were playing – the game style, but we probably just turned the ball over a little bit,” he said.

“They got reward for their entries and we didn’t get reward for ours.

“But we still felt we were playing the way we wanted to play and that was the message at half-time.”

Roos said his side’s scintillating second half, which produced 16 goals to six, was again due to a consistent performance across the board.  

“We knew they were two [players] down [through injury] and that can sometimes energise opposition teams and sometimes it can flatten them, so it’s always a concern – as silly as it sounds,” he said.

“We talked a lot about continuing to run and work hard and the second half was very good.”

Overall, Roos believes his team can now beat “most teams” at its absolute best.

But he stressed, it had to be at its optimum.  

“Equally, I think they still know that we need to bring our best,” he said.

“We don’t have a lot of margin for error and we saw that last week – I thought St Kilda played a really good game of footy. We were a bit off and there was the result – [a loss].

“Against Essendon [in round two], they played particularly well, the Bombers, and we were a bit off, so once again [we lost]. So we’re a team that’s best is really, really good, but we still haven’t got margin for error.

“We had 17 or 18 good players [against Gold Coast] and if we get that, we’re going to be a good team. I think there is an understanding from our group that they all have to play well and if they do that – then we generally get a positive result.”