ACTIONS speak louder than words as far as Melbourne coach Dean Bailey is concerned and he is expecting his players to make a strong statement against the Bulldogs on Saturday following their round one capitulation.

“We were very disappointing last week; we were uncompetitive for too long last week and we’ve made that a focus this week that we are going to be competitive,” Bailey said of the 104-point round one loss to Hawthorn.

 “We let not only [ourselves} down but our members and it was very disappointing.

"But you’ve got to get on with next week and look forward to the game ahead so we can redeem our poor effort of last week.

“We’re coming off a really poor effort last week, there’s no question about that, no one’s hidden from that, but it’s about this week.

“Once the ball bounces on Saturday, that’s when we need … to show some action, we need to actually put it on the ground where it matters.”

Redemption has been the theme at Junction Oval this week with Bailey taking a two-pronged approach after the disappointing loss. His players have been worked hard on the track and have also gone back to the classroom where Bailey has reinforced his game plan.

“We probably spent a longer period of time looking at parts of the game and analysing them,” he said.

“We can still teach and educate our players on what they didn’t do well, so that’s where we were at for this week and we hope to see some improvement on Saturday.

“Training was very intense [on Wednesday], very intense. The intensity was lacking last week, so if you don’t get it in the game, you get it out of them during the week.”

Speaking at the MCG on Thursday, Bailey laughed off suggestions that his horror baptism of fire had caused him some sleepless nights and would not be drawn when asked if he had put the heat on his senior players after the loss.

“We didn’t get enough from everyone; to single out anyone is inappropriate,” he said.

“All our players lacked the intensity and lacked the competitive spirit that I expect whether you’re a leader or not. It wasn’t there last week, but our actions have got to speak louder than words.

“You’ve got to go into every game with the strong belief that you can win. If I walked in with a poor attitude and a poor belief then I shouldn’t be sitting here. We’re going to go and attack the game on Saturday; that’s what we need to do.

“At the end of the day, we’ve lost round one and round two becomes an even bigger game for us with even more pressure on our players to perform. Under pressure, the best performances should come, so we expect a good performance on Saturday.”