COACH Paul Roos says it won’t be until at least the middle of the season when he has a true indication of Melbourne’s list.

Speaking at AAMI Park on Monday – the day after Melbourne’s 32-point loss to Greater Western Sydney at Spotless Stadium – Roos said it was too early to tell if a shake-up of the club’s list was needed by the season’s end.

“It’s hard to tell – it really is, because we’re seeing some improvement from [the likes of] Rohan Bail, who I thought was pretty good on the weekend, Matty Jones … some of the guys that were maybe on the cusp a little bit – and Dean Terlich, who I think has been really good,” he said.

“Probably the first half of the year is a really good chance for us to have a good look at it (the list).

“Then halfway during the year we’ll have a much better idea.”  

Roos said Melbourne was “clearly a long way off” the likes of Hawthorn and Geelong, but “at some point they were exactly the same stage as what we were”.

“You’re really looking back and saying ‘what were the things that they did that made a big change’. It happens over a course of time – it doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.

Reflecting on the loss to GWS, Roos said he wasn’t sure if there were more negatives or positives to come from the result.    

“I’m still undecided to be honest,” he said.

“It’s difficult because we want to continue to move forward and then you’re hit with a couple of weeks like that and you wonder yourself. I defer a lot to Todd [Viney] and Jade [Rawlings] who have been around here for a while, but you don’t want to keep looking back.

“A lot of the review is on the last 25 or 26 minutes [of the match] … so that seems [like] something that we really need to address. It’s been a bit of a pattern, so we’ve really got to focus on that period more so than the positive side of it. I think there were positives, but we’re probably focusing on what went wrong, rather than what went right.”

Still, Roos said “there was no doubt” Melbourne looked a different side with James Frawley and Lynden Dunn in attack.

“At least we were able to go forward with a little bit of certainty and some size and some strength down there. That was an experiment that we thought worked, so I would suggest we’d probably continue to go with that,” he said.

But Roos said the coaching group also needed to take some responsibility with Melbourne’s situation.

“We’re working together as a group, [but] are we teaching them the right way [or] aren’t we? So that’s something we look at, as a coaching group,” he said.

“Should they be further advanced [or] shouldn’t they be, so we’re assessing our own performance on a daily basis.”

“But we’re certainly clear on how we want to get there – there’s no question about that.”

Looking ahead to Saturday’s clash against Carlton, Roos said it was simply an opportunity to develop.

“Every game we’ve got a chance to shape our game style and we’ve got a chance to play personnel. We’ve got a chance to teach our players and it’s clearly very, very frustrating. I knew exactly what it was going to be like when I signed up,” he said.

“Ultimately, to get to where Geelong and Hawthorn have got to – you know where their starting point was and you know why they are a good competitive team now, because they set the foundations eight, nine or 10 years ago.

“That’s the phase that we’re in and that’s why I’ve got to be really clear on what we’re doing with the players.”