MELBOURNE coach Simon Goodwin says his side’s inability to convert when going forward was a major factor in its nine-point loss to Sydney at the MCG on Sunday afternoon.

The Demons had 17 more inside 50’s than the Swans with plenty of opportunities to hit the scoreboard, but the ball use upon entry wasn’t up to scratch.

“We need to actually be more efficient going inside forward 50, that will help us,” Godwin said post-game.

“We didn’t connect well forward of centre.

“It’s been a little bit of a tale of some of our games this year where we’ve just struggled to connect and have efficiency going inside forward 50.

“So that was probably a bit of where the game was lost as well, we certainly didn’t do that very well.”

The Demons had a poor day in front of the sticks, kicking 18 behinds from 28 scoring shots, but Goodwin doesn’t believe the inaccuracy is a cause for serious concern.

“We had a bad day,” he said.

“We’ll dust ourselves off, do some work on the training track and come out and perform better next week.”

In defence, the Demons allowed Sydney to control possession of the ball too regularly, as the Swans took a whopping 99 uncontested marks throughout the game.

“It’s an area of the game that we’ve been really strong in for a while – defending opposition uncontested marks – [but we were] nowhere near the level,” Goodwin said.

“Defensively we needed to buy in more to that area of the game and that would’ve given us more opportunities as well.

“It’s not a theme in terms of the whole year … but we didn’t really defend the ball where we wanted to defend it.”

Although Sunday’s loss was a setback in the club’s finals aspirations, Goodwin is excited by the upcoming schedule.

“We just spoke about the next opportunity which is next Sunday against the Eagles,” he said.

“We’re not looking any further than that.

“We’ve put ourselves in this position and we’re looking forward to grabbing some of these opportunities, no question.

“But we’ll cross that hurdle when we get to it.”

Goodwin is confident the Demons will respond after Sunday’s loss and that they can still compete with the best sides throughout the remainder of 2018.

“We’re not sitting here and wallowing,” he said.

“We want to get on with it, move forward, be really positive with our group.

“Every time we’ve challenged them this year they’ve responded, so we’ll certainly go down that path and get better.”

Melbourne has now lost five games by less than two goals this season, but Goodwin believes the exposure to difficult situations is a positive for the future of the side.

“We’ve worked really hard on our close games,” he said.

“We won one the other week against Adelaide so we’ll continue to experience those results and get better at them, no question.”