MELBOURNE leader Brad Green concedes his club made the right decision to delay his return from a broken jaw to Sunday evening's clash with Hawthorn at the MCG.

Green, who suffered his injury against Richmond in round four and spent four matches on the sidelines, was itching to play the previous weekend against the Western Bulldogs, but now admits the club made the right call in putting off his comeback by a week.

"I'd pumped myself up to play last week - I got the clearance from the doctors to play," Green, who was one of his side's best with 30 disposals against the Hawks, told melbournefc.com.au.

"I went out there at training (and said) 'I need a few knocks', so I did some contested marking at training and had a few blokes trying to rough me up a bit.

"I really pumped myself up and the coach said: 'We want another week of training. That was great, because it settled me down. It was just a normal training week for me this week."

Green conceded he got a couple of knocks to his jaw against the Hawks, but "once you're playing and the adrenalin is going, you're fine".

"That's footy – you're going to get a knock," he said.

"I've got screws and plates and it's held together nice and tight, so there are no problems."

On the 22-point loss to the reigning premiers, Green said it was the first half that proved costly.

"Our work-rate wasn't there, and they had too many loose men and got easy ball, especially in the forward line," he said.

"To our credit, we kept fighting in the second half. If there was 15 minutes more – we still had the run and I felt that were coming and coming and Hawthorn was slowing."

Green said Melbourne's narrow loss to Hawthorn in its NAB Cup clash earlier this year gave the Demons some hope. 

"It gave us the confidence that we can certainly match it with these guys, and everyone loves to come up against the reigning premiers to try and knock them off," he said.

"The worst thing we could've done was gone out there and got beaten by 12 to 15 goals – that would've been terrible."