FIRED-UP at quarter time of Melbourne's 116-point loss to Geelong on Friday night, coach Dean Bailey was composed but frustrated once the game was over.

Addressing the media at his post-match conference, he saw a very obvious outcome from a contest that never saw the Demons mount a charge against the premier.

"We just got an absolute football lesson," Bailey said, and no-one could argue with his quick summation of the hiding his team was given by Geelong.

"We turned the ball over and they counter-attacked at speed. They are not only an incredibly hard team to win the ball off, but they win the uncontested ball at speed.

"They turned it into an uncontested speed game and we couldn’t match it. We were running behind.

"Our guys were a little bit shell-shocked at the start."

Bailey recognised that his team's performance was on a par with the first two rounds of the year, when it was thumped by Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs by 104 and 95 points respectively.

He also saw that the relentless Cats tightened the screws as the game went on and left the Demons mentally intimidated.

"I think if you have a look at the game you'd have to say they (the players) were," he said.

"Although there was a slight improvement in the second half, the scoreboard would suggest that we were unable to change our decisions."

Geelong's pressure forced Melbourne into making hurried handballs too often, and Bailey's direction at the main break was to win more of the contested ball and spread wider to find options around the ground.

"The results were turnover, turnover, counter-attack, goal," he said.

"We couldn’t create enough turnovers [ourselves]. They were very effective on the counter-attack."

And Geelong's fast ball movement and ability to create the right distance between its players for damaging use showed an admirable cohesion.

"They seem to have an ESP between them," he said.

"They know there is a player there."