CO-CAPTAIN Jack Trengove says the Demons were still frustrated with their 43-point loss to Geelong at Simonds Stadium on Saturday, despite their manful effort.

Given it was the first time Melbourne had returned to Geelong since last year’s shocking 186-point loss - and the fact it hadn’t won this season - the red and blue battled hard for four quarters against the quality Cats.

But Geelong was simply too good at home again, a feat Trengove acknowledged.  

“You’ve got to give Geelong the respect that they deserve. They won the premiership last year and they’ve shown for years that they’re a quality outfit,” he told melbournefc.com.au.

“But at the same time, we didn’t do ourselves any favours. We gave up a lot of easy goals, which was because of their good work, but some of it was our bad work with easy kicks. So we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit.

“We’ve got to be more consistent over four quarters and we had little lapses here and there, where it opened up for them and they got the lead on us.”

Still, Trengove pointed to areas of improvement.

“The positives were with our ball movement. We were really able to take it to one of the best teams in the competition, so we’ve got to look at that as a positive,” he said.

“They missed a lot of opportunities early on and if you take away those two patches [of four goals in a row during the match], then we were right in the contest.

“For us to become a top four side, which is the aim, we’ve got to stop those situations. So we’ve got to keep looking at those positives and move forward … although we’re disappointed with the loss.”

Trengove, who had 21 disposals, said the opportunity to play against the Geelong midfield was invaluable for his development.

“They’re one of the best midfielders around. It is great experience for me and the younger boys, but coming up against the likes of Jimmy Bartel, Joel Corey and then Steve Johnson - it’s a great challenge,” he said.

“They probably had the better of us in the midfield throughout the day, but it’s been a few weeks in a row since we’ve come up against a good midfield like that and we’re going to come up against another one in Hawthorn next week.

“So it’s something we’ve got to keep working on and hopefully we’ll bridge that gap.”