DESPITE winning the past three best and fairest awards, Nathan Jones has taken his game to another level this year, says coach Paul Roos.

Roos, speaking to Dee TV, said Jones’ leadership, since becoming sole captain this year, had been one of his greatest strengths. 

“His leadership is going through the roof and his ability now to organise players and talk during the week [has improved significantly],” he said.

“He even has more empathy with his teammates [because] he was one of those guys who yells and screams a bit, but now he has much more of an ability to have a conversation and understand what other players are going through.

“So I can’t speak highly enough of him and what he’s contributing to the club.”

Roos said Jones was “a real student of the game” and was always looking to improve.

“I know there was a couple of games this year where he was really, really disappointed in his own performance. He comes and sits in my office and goes to [assistant coaches] Goody (Simon Goodwin) and Benny Mathews and really wants to know why and how he can get better,” he said.

“I think the great thing for Nathan and I now – [after] there was probably a fair bit of difference last year between what he thought was a good game and what I thought was a good game – is that we’ve narrowed that gap, which is great.

“He really wants to be a good player under our system. Last year, he wanted to be a good player, but he wasn’t sure what the system was and now he knows what it is. He’s really striving to be the player that I want him to be and what Benny and Goody want him to be.

“He was disappointed a bit early in a couple of his games, but the last two or three weeks, he really is playing the way we want him to play, and he’s getting reward for it and he’s playing really, really good football.”

Meanwhile, Roos said he had been pleased with Melbourne’s consistency leading up to the bye and he was looking to keep building on that in the second half of the season.

“Consistency [is] what I’ve been pleased with for [the past] three weeks, even though we didn’t win against Collingwood and we didn’t win against St Kilda,” he said.

“I think it’s been by far our best three week patch since I’ve been coaching. We’ve tended to win one and then lose one really poorly and then have a great half and then the second half has been disastrous.

“But in terms of consistency of what we’re asking as a coaching group, and the players are asking of each other now, has been really good over a three-week period.”

Still, Roos said Melbourne could have won its past three matches, but failed to capitalise its opportunities against Collingwood and St Kilda.

“We could’ve easily gone three [wins] and zero [losses], but we didn’t and that’s what we’re disappointed [about]. We played a really good team in Collingwood and a team similar to us [in St Kilda], which is well coached with Richo (Alan Richardson),” he said.

“I think he’s doing a terrific job and he’s got some good young kids coming in. He’s got some experience with [Nick] Riewoldt, [Leigh] Montagna, [Jack] Steven and [Sean] Dempster and guys like that.

“But I think overall, the [past] three weeks have been really positive and if we continue playing that sort of football – that’s really going to be the goal in the final 10 games.”