COACH Paul Roos says key forward Jesse Hogan will return for Sunday’s clash against the Western Bulldogs

Hogan was a late withdrawal from Saturday’s 105-point loss to Hawthorn at the MCG, due to a back injury. His replacement was Cameron Pedersen, who booted three of Melbourne’s seven goals.

But Roos confirmed Hogan would be back against the Dogs.

“He’ll definitely play next week. We could’ve pushed him out there [against Hawthorn], but in hindsight it was a really wise decision on the back of [Christian] Salem [injuring his] hamstring,” he said.

“Jesse read the play really well himself and spoke to me [on the] morning [of the match].

“I didn’t know how Christian was feeling going into the game, but we really need to do a nice audit on the players and give them a couple of days off early in the week.”

Roos said forward Jack Watts, who was omitted for the clash against Hawthorn, was courageous in suggesting he should have a run with Casey, as “everyone wants to play senior footy”.

“It was really honest of him to put his hand up in that manner. It gives you an indication of how hard it is for him,” he said.

“No one goes out to play poorly and I think that’s the reminder for our fans. No one goes to do that. My job is to work out how we don’t reproduce that form, because there are two ways you can go, and we’ve seen it before here.

“We’ve started the year off in a really positive manner, so we don’t want that to be the catalyst to go the wrong way.

“That’s why we work out why it happened internally. But you can see there are clearly pressures on players now – it is unprecedented now with Twitter and Facebook and there is so much media coverage.”