COACH Paul Roos says locking in a system and game plan – akin to what Geelong and Hawthorn has become accustomed to – comes before personnel.
Speaking at a media conference at AAMI Park on Thursday, Roos said it was imperative that fundamentals were in place first and the rest would follow.
“It’s really relevant for where we are as a footy club – we’ve got to put a system in over a two-year period,” he said.
“We’re a club that’s trying to find our feet and a club that’s trying to find our own identity, before we worry about everyone else.”
Roos said he had also picked Essendon coach Mark Thompson’s brain about how he went about it at Geelong, when he guided the Cats to two flags. He added that he would love to sit down with Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson as well.
“Hopefully over a two-year period – this year and next year – we can put some system in place, where the players become experts.”
Roos said Geelong and Hawthorn were “experts” at what they do and the Melbourne players “were far from experts”. And he added that it was no disrespect to the opposition that Melbourne hadn’t delved deeply into analysing the opposition.
“In an ideal world, we’d love to be able to do that and we’d love to be able to spend a lot of time during the week, talking about how we take things away from the other team,” he said.
Roos said Melbourne’s start to the season had been frustrating, given it had been in the contest for all but one match.
“It’s frustrating because we’ve been in four of the games and we’ve only won one of them,” he said.
“We got belted by West Coast and that was super disappointing, so as coach, you spend your week sometimes with the glass half full and sometimes the glass half empty, because you’ve got to balance that out with where our group’s at, at the moment.
“We have been super competitive in four of our five games, but we’ve only won one. We’ve got to continue to get better and we’ve got to challenge each other to do that every single week.”
Roos said he had to be reminded that Melbourne was coming from a long way behind the rest of the pack.
“I’m competitive and I’m here to win games of footy, but people do remind me that in 80 per cent of the games, we could’ve won four of them.”
“I’m glad when people do remind me, because I get a bit down and feel for the supporters and feel for the players.
“But there has been some significant improvement – statistically, defensively, we’ve been very, very good, other than the game against the Eagles, so there’s certainly been some positives.
“I get disappointed when we don’t win, but then you reflect during the week and you reflect on the positives.”
Roos said midfielder Christian Salem was firming to make his debut against the Sydney Swans at the MCG this Saturday night.
“He certainly is,” he said.
“He’s now eligible for selection for the senior team, based on a four, five, six week block of performance.
“Clearly, last week was his best game, so all I can say now is that he’s available for selection, based on his performance and then we’ll decide post-training what the team looks like … so certainly he’s pushed his way into that 24 or 25 group now, which is a good effort for him.”
