KEY forward Chris Dawes says the players must aim to play in September next year, even if they appear to be lofty targets from many outside of the inner sanctum.

Dawes said there was plenty to be optimistic about entering 2015 and he was adamant that the time had come for the players to up the ante.

“The club will do its best to manage expectations from supporters and from the industry and they won’t talk about finals this year, but as players, we absolutely have to be talking about finals,” he told Dee TV.

“It has to be our goal. It’s not a question of talent, because we’ve got one of the more talented lists in the comp – in my view – and we’ve still got a few holes as everyone would.

“This playing group is absolutely capable of it and it’s got to be a big part of our belief. That has to become part of our internal conversations we have at the club.”

Dawes said if Melbourne can build on the wins it produced and the competitive form it showed for much of 2014, until the latter stages, then it will “start to make an assault up the ladder” in 2015.

He added that a loss of confidence late in the season shouldn’t override the fact that Melbourne made considerable improvement in 2014.

“As a club, we really took some big strides and improved a fair bit,” Dawes said.

“The second half of the year on field was disappointing and through the middle of the year we were actually starting to play a pretty good brand of football.

“We were playing good contested footy – the sort of footy that holds up in finals.”

On a personal level, Dawes said he got “very little work in” pre-Christmas last year, but he was confident with a full pre-season this year, he’ll bounce back strongly in 2015.

“Post-Christmas, it was this mad rush to try and get enough conditioning in my legs to be able to play a game of footy. To have a couple of little calf tears in amongst that made it tough,” he said.

“Reflecting now, I can be pleased that I was able to put in enough work to be able to play 18 games, but they weren’t very high quality games.

“Part of that is just poor form and part of that I can blame on bad luck with injury and a lack of conditioning.

Now with two seasons under his belt in the red and blue, the 2010 Collingwood premiership player said he had no regrets whatsoever about leaving Collingwood for Melbourne.

“The only real difference is previously my old club used to win a lot more games and we made a prelim final in my final year there and I found it really hard to enjoy my footy there that year,” Dawes said.

“So for me, it was clearly obvious that I had to move.

“I was thankful for them for giving me an opportunity to start my career, but even last year, when things were going really bad at the Demons, I loved the added responsibility and there was so much work to be done.”