COACH Paul Roos says his side’s lack of effort was what frustrated him the most against Geelong, during Melbourne’s 66-point loss at the MCG on Saturday.

Roos said his players were unable to play at a competitive level, which had been far more evident throughout 2014.

“We’ve probably talked about it a bit, [but we’ve got to get back to] minimum standards and we got to get back to that level of performance over the last 10 or 12 weeks,” he said.

“I thought today (Saturday) we dropped back below those standards that we were able to get to.

“It looked to me that we had too many guys, who weren’t all that interested in competing today (Saturday) and when you’re playing a good team, it’s not a good mindset to bring.”

Roos said Geelong was process driven, rather than reliant on looking up at the scoreboard throughout the match.

“Clearly, a young, developing team needs to get some little wins along the way during the game … because experienced teams don’t really worry about the scoreboard – they just keep doing what they do over and over and over and over again,” he said.

“Young teams need to look up [at the scoreboard] and go ‘oh that’s good, we’re three goals now and they’re three goals and we’re even’.

“It is human nature – you miss chances early in the game and then things just fall away and you go back into your shell and go into survival mode after that.”

Roos said he would dissect the game on Monday to see “who dug in and who did really, really well”. He acknowledged the players were trying individually, but collectively they battled.

“And that is why there are times when we can't move the ball,” he said.  

“What happens with individuals, when the team doesn't play well, certain players get looked at because people know Jack Watts more than they know Rohan Bail or Matt Jones or whatever,” he said.

“Probably Watts is a good example because he is playing his role, but if everyone else is not playing their role, than it's really hard for him to play his role.

“Geelong probably had three high possession winners, but everyone else just did what they had to do at that particular time. Geelong had way better players, but in reality Jimmy Bartel had 15 [disposals], but Jimmy plays his role.  

“That is when the guys all suffer – when no-one wants to play their role. It's probably harder for the forwards, because the ball is not coming down with any fluency – they are the ones that suffer the most when the team is not playing very well.”