COACH Paul Roos has praised the performance of youngster Christian Petracca, who produced one of the best games of his short, yet exciting, 12-game career.

Petracca delivered some beautiful passes, hitting teammates with precision and at important times during Melbourne’s epic clash with the West Coast Eagles at Domain Stadium on Saturday.  Roos said the No.2 pick in the 2014 NAB AFL Draft had been getting better each week.

“He’s picking up the speed of the game, which is terrific. That comes with continuity and he’s been able to get into the team and stay in the team,” he said.

“You can see there is no doubt that having the year out [through injury] last year has helped him. It wasn’t because of his knee, but being a year older makes a huge difference and we saw that with Jesse Hogan last year.

“Clayton Oliver compared to Petracca – Clayton gets pretty tired pretty quickly and he still has a lot to learn.

“Tracc as a year older – his first year – he has the ability to stay in the team and pick up the pace and keep getting better each week. The first year players find it a lot harder.”

Petracca said he was pleased with certain areas of his game.

“I thought my contested ball was really good, but West Coast is quite a tall backline, so were trying to use them on speed and a couple of times we did that,” he said.

“We just couldn’t convert.”