INJURIES to three key players have further soured Melbourne’s 38-point loss to the Western Bulldogs at Casey Fields on Saturday.

Aaron Davey (heel), Rickey Petterd (hip) and Daniel Bell (broken thumb) were all unavailable at the game’s close.

Coach Dean Bailey was worried, but philosophical about the toll the game had taken on his team.

 “We’ll lose them, but that’s the way it is,” he said.

“It’s a physical game.”

The report of Clint Bartram further compounded the Demons problems, after he made front-on con-tact with Daniel Giansiracusa in a last quarter that saw Melbourne kept scoreless while the Dogs piled on five goals.

It made poor watching for Demons’ fans who were only trailing by two points at the last change.

 “I thought our last quarter was pretty poor,” said Bailey.

“All we did was defend, we really let ourselves down. It was really disappointing.”

Bailey was pleased with the return of senior pair in captain James McDonald and Brad Green, who booted three majors. However, he acknowledged more will need to be done before the Dees round one encounter against North Melbourne. 

“You review the game and you look at where you have to improve on,” he said.

“Our decision-making and our competitiveness let us down in that last quarter, while in our last three games we have kicked the ball better.”

Despite the loss, Bailey believes his men are starting to reap the rewards from a tough pre-season on the training track and are more advanced in their preparation compared to this time last year.

“The amount of volume our guys have done at training is certainly a lot more than we did last year,” he said.

“We have been able to put a lot of work in them.”