KEY defender Tom McDonald says the Demons mixed things up at Monday’s review, following their disappointing 23-point loss against the Brisbane Lions at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

McDonald said the Dees simply had to “review things a bit differently” after they squandered a 14-point lead at the six-minute mark of the final term.

“We watched the whole game in pairs. I watched it with Dunny (Lynden Dunn), who is someone that plays in a similar position to me. We went through the game and watched it from behind the goals [vision],” he told melbournefc.com.au.

“We watched the whole game and focused on each other and how we could have done more, so it was a bit different from that perspective.

“The coaches go through the full game and we went through the full game as well, and we’ll all come back in as a group and go through it tomorrow (Tuesday).”

McDonald said the players gained an alterative view of the game in the review to understand why the result panned out the way it did. 

“From the backline, you see how things work up the ground, and on game day you don’t see the play ahead of the ball, because you’re often looking to the side or behind to see where the other men are,” he said.

“We just saw how many simple mistakes we made and it was laughable how bad some of the things we stuffed up were.

“We saw all of the different problems that happened and that often caused us to miss our chance at goal and it cost us goals against as well.”

Although the Lions have won five of their past nine matches – after winning just one of their opening nine games of the season – McDonald said the loss against an ‘in form’ team compared to the Demons was no excuse. 

“It’s disappointing to lose no matter who it is,” he said.

“It was just as disappointing to lose against Port Adelaide [twice] as it was against St Kilda [in round one] and being smashed by West Coast [in round two].

“The fact that it makes it worse is that we were up in the last quarter and we really should have closed it out.”

McDonald conceded the loss to the Lions was “close” to the most disappointing of the season.

“It was a bit frustrating to have another game where we’ve been run over at the end, and we’ve had a fair few of them this year, so it was disappointing,” he said.

“Last week against Port Adelaide was disappointing for a number of reasons, because we did a lot of things right. To be up with a couple of minutes to go, it was a crushing position to lose against Port.”

“But there was more disappointment and anger at how bad we were against the Lions, because we played a lot better against Port. It was a pretty bad performance against the Lions.”

Although Melbourne’s defence kept the Lions to a score of 74 points, McDonald conceded his area could have done more. 

“Their score wasn’t a super high score, so from that point of view, it was quite good,” he said.

“There was just a feeling that we weren’t quite [switched] on in several ways and while we weren’t terrible as a backline, we definitely made mistakes defensively and a lot of mistakes with the footy.”

With the Demons now set to face the top of the ladder Hawks at the MCG this Saturday, McDonald said it was a significant challenge his team needed to tackle head on.  

“Personally, I want to step up and play better footy against really good competition,” he said.

“I don’t think we’re intimidated by Hawthorn, but if the mindset’s not there, they could really blow us away.

“If we bring the right attitude and tidy up some of our stuff ups – we might be able to stick with them. But if we’re not on, they could really blow us away, so it’ll be a big test for us.”