KEY FORWARD Chris Dawes says the Demons can take confidence from their performance against the Tigers at the MCG on Sunday, but they can’t accept the result.

Speaking after Melbourne’s 34-point loss, Dawes said the effort was much better than what it showed against Gold Coast the previous round, but it simply had to be at AFL level.

“Coaches shouldn’t have to coach effort at AFL level – we’ve said that a few times this week,” he said.

“That’s on the players and we’re pretty confident that won’t happen again – that lack of effort that we saw last weekend. [This match] was the first step towards that.

 “We competed hard and we put ourselves in a position to win, but we couldn’t win, so we can’t accept that and now we’ve got to train ourselves to be better, so we can start winning games.”

Dawes said it was easy to get annoyed when playing in a team that didn’t play with endeavour.  

“Anyone who plays in a side that lacks effort is going to get frustrated,” he said.

“That’s nothing to do with where I’ve come from – or perhaps it is.

“The fact that we had to revisit that – anyone playing AFL would assume that’s a given, and that’s the most frustrating thing.”