COACH Paul Roos says the performance against North Melbourne at the MCG last weekend was a result of faded effort in the third quarter.

Speaking at a media conference at AAMI Park on Tuesday, Roos spoke of how the lack in concentration ultimately led to a disappointing loss.

“[For] 20 minutes in the third [quarter] we were really poor,” he said.

“I thought that was where the game was won and lost. We just dropped away dramatically.”

Roos said that without a consistent competitive effort, it would be hard to win games

“We know where we’re at. If we don’t compete minute by minute we’re not going to win,” he said.

“We’ve been doing that pretty well for a long period of time now and I thought [on] the weekend we dropped off dramatically in one period of the game.”

Roos also spoke of the last game against the Bulldogs in round eight. Again it was a lack of effort in the final stages of the game that resulted in a loss.

“I thought it was a really good game last time. I thought both teams played pretty well. I thought it was a high standard game,” he said.

“It’s all part of the learning curve but I thought the Bulldogs, just in the key moments in the last quarter, made better decisions than what we did.

“Really the moments that counted in the last quarter they stood up and I thought that was probably the difference.”

Looking ahead to Sunday’s clash at Etihad Stadium, Roos was confident that a more consistent intensity would be brought to the game.  

“We let ourselves down on the weekend but hopefully we can come out and play a lot better next week,” he said.