DEFENDER Jack Grimes says the Demons need to hit back hard against the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium on Sunday, after a disappointing loss to the Kangaroos.

Melbourne went down to North Melbourne by 41 points at the MCG on Sunday night and Grimes said it was critical it didn’t lose to the Dogs for a second time this year, when the two sides meet in round 15.

“We really need to respond and it’s going to be a big week on the track, working on a lot of areas,” the co-captain told melbournefc.com.au.

“The Doggies have played some good footy lately, so we know it’s going to be a tough day. We’re going to really have to play our best footy to match it with them and we know we can.

“We have to make sure we go out there with the right attitude and the exact focuses to play our game. We’ve got no doubt we’ll be right in the game, if we do that.” 

Reflecting on Melbourne’s second heaviest defeat of the season, Grimes said the Demons were “really, really disappointed with the way we played and the result”.

“We didn’t think it was an acceptable performance at all,” he said.

“We let ourselves down in a lot of areas – not just one specific area. A lot of our ball use was very poor and we had a lot of costly turnovers and we gave them a lot of easy access from our turnovers, which didn’t help us at all. Some of them came at crucial times as well.

“Defensively, around the ball, we weren’t nearly as good as we have been in the past few weeks. We let them get easy access at times and they were getting to the contest at times.

“As the game went on, we probably dropped off way too much in that area and we let them play the style of footy we knew they can play.”

Although Grimes praised North Melbourne, he said his side needed to take it right up to the likes of the Kangaroos to go to the next level.

“North Melbourne is a great team and it showed the footy it can play, but they’re the exact team that we really need to start putting our hand up against,” he said.

“We feel like our best footy is good enough to compete with teams like North Melbourne, but we just didn’t give ourselves a chance and we were really disappointed to let an opportunity like that slip through.

“We just have to start making games like that count for us. We can’t let those losses creep in, if we’re going to keep moving forward as a footy team.”