COACH Paul Roos says games won’t be gifted to players in the final four rounds.

Roos said the club would pick its best 22 for its remaining matches against the Western Bulldogs, Carlton, Fremantle and Greater Western Sydney, but added that a close eye would be kept on its younger players to monitor their progress.

“We want to reward effort and we don’t want to throw anyone in who we don’t think deserves it,” he said on Roos’ Views.

“We’re also mindful of the young guys and using the sub and alternating that. We dropped Billy Stretch the other week, but gave him the weekend off after some consultation.

“Part of the discussion is – who do we want to see for the rest of the year? But they need to be in good form.”

Roos said it was important Melbourne finished the season strongly to build momentum heading into pre-season.

“What I was really pleased with was that we pushed a top four team [from last year last round], which we haven’t done that earlier in the year,” he said.

“We hadn’t been able to do that against Sydney, Freo, or Hawthorn … and Port Adelaide we struggled with also.

“So what we’re looking to do is finish off the year strongly – win, lose or draw – so we can go into pre-season with some real confidence. That’s the aim for the four weeks.”

Roos said it was disappointing Casey lost against Box Hill Hawks last Sunday, as it now means that not as many players are pushing for selection against the Western Bulldogs at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

“We’ll have a good look at selection. [It will have] a lot to do with younger players … and freshening them up as well this week,” he said.

“We feel like, as a group, we’re getting tired and run down, so that’s something we’ve really focused on as a coaching group – just to freshen everyone up to have a crack at the last four weeks of the season.”

Although Melbourne has defeated the Western Bulldogs twice this year – once in a NAB Challenge match and in round eight by 39 points – Roos said it was a different scenario this time around against the much-improved Bulldogs.

“It illustrates how different every game is. We played Collingwood twice and lost once and beat them once. We played St Kilda twice and lost by two points and then lost the next one [by 37 points]. Every game seems to be really different – even when you’re playing teams twice,” he said.

“You can’t take too much out of the last result. You’ve got to watch the opposition’s best footy and at times watch their worst footy – just to get an idea of what teams have done.

“The process is pretty simple for every club. You do that and then you turn up and hope you’re prepared for your opposition.”

Roos said the loss to North Melbourne was indicative of where his side is now at.

“We were disappointed with a loss like that – it shows how far we’ve come,” he said.

“We played really poorly in the first quarter, which we were disappointed with, and then we played really, really well – probably [some of] our best football [for the year] – for two and a half quarters. The last 15 [minutes of the match], we were trying to play catch-up [football], and unless you can get two or three goals in front, it’s always hard and you tend to drop off.

“There was some really good stuff, but we’ve got to focus on the start, because that’s when the game was really lost.”