LEADER James Frawley says he couldn’t fault the effort of his teammates against Richmond at the MCG on Sunday.
Although the Demons went down by 34 points, Frawley said the endeavour shown by his team was genuine.
“The boys really had a crack today – that’s all you can ask. Over five weeks, we’ve had one bad week, which we all know was last week [against the Gold Coast Suns], when we copped a bit from the media, but you’ve got to wear that if you don’t perform,” he told melbournefc.com.au.
“I reckon this week we’ve already responded and although we’re still not happy with getting the four points, it was a lot better effort than last week.
“You go out to win and we didn’t win, so you can’t say it was one of the better ones we’ve had, but I can’t knock the boys, they had a crack and that’s all I can see and judge the blokes on. You [were able to] look them in the eye after the game and say ‘yeah, you had a go’, so I’m happy with that.”
Frawley said it had been a tough week leading up to the clash against the Tigers, on the back of Melbourne’s 60-point loss to the Gold Coast Suns at the MCG in round seven.
“In the media, we copped a fair smashing and Neeldy (Mark Neeld) copped it a bit,” he said.
“It’s nothing to do with him – it’s us players – we’re the ones out there playing footy, so you can’t put all of the blame on him.
“Us players have got to take some of it, and the best way to respond from last week was to come out and have a go. We were in the game at three quarter-time and had a chance of winning it. It didn’t actually work out for us, but we were there and we were actually a chance, so it was a positive.”
Frawley said the Demons felt positive that they were still a chance at three quarter-time, although they trailed by 22 points.
“It makes it more enjoyable out there,” he said.
“If you’re losing by a little bit, you go into your shell and get a bit down.
“Out there today, it was actually pretty good and the boys were upbeat and you can’t really knock them for anything they did. It was a pretty good effort.”
But Frawley said Melbourne needed to tackle Fremantle at Patersons Stadium head on next round, despite the enormity of the task.
“It’s a good challenge for us to fly over in the plane and have a four hour trip,” he said.
“There’s no excuse for us this week. It’s a long ground and we’ve got some really good runners in the team, so [we need to] get up there and really have a go.
“They’ve been playing pretty well. They drew with Sydney, so they’ve been travelling all right - we’ll have to give it our best and give it our all and see how we go.”
