COACH Neale Daniher has plenty to occupy his mind following the 31-point loss to St Kilda in the season-opener at the MCG on Friday night.

The Demons lost defender Matthew Whelan early in the game after his shepherd on Saints co-captain Luke Ball while midfielder Brock McLean was on crutches after hurting his lower leg just before half-time.

While the immediate word was that McLean has ligament damage in his foot, it could involve bone damage.

"He's done something to his foot and it could be quite serious," Daniher said.

When asked if McLean had broken a bone, Daniher replied: "it could be that or it could have torn some ligaments in his foot."

The Demons said Whelan had neck spasms after the Ball collision.

Daniher said it was imperative that Melbourne rebound quickly from the poor opening.

"We came out last year and started slowly, but we don't want to go to that 0-3 where we were last year," he said.

"It's obviously a really disappointing result."We started encouragingly enough... but we lost our way, no doubt about that, in the second and third quarters.

"We over-possessed the ball, our game broke down across half-back.

"We weren't hard enough, for sure."

Daniher said his players were unwilling to kick the ball and said they became "tackling targets".

"Blokes who were clear weren't willing to go through (Brad) Miller and our (other) forwards and we lost our way," he said.

"We played very dumb football in those second and third quarters."

He said rather than switching the play effectively, the Demons tried to run and carry the ball by going back through the areas where the game was most congested.

"I wouldn't have thought there were any aspects of our game we did enough of," he said.