Speaking in his post-match media conference after Melbourne's 48 point loss to the Kangaroos, Bailey indicated his side's poor opening term - when North Melbourne started with 12 scoring shots to zip - was crucial in the overall result.
"We started poor and they got off to a good start and we'd spoken about how important our start was this week against them. We couldn't get ourselves back into it . . .we took a step back from last week, no doubt," Bailey said.
Bailey said he couldn't find one Demon who "was fantastic for a long period of time".
"Today we fell behind in that competitiveness, so we expect that from all of our players," Bailey said.
"We're about having even contributors across the ground, and guys came in and out … but at the end of the day we got beaten significantly.
"The fact that the Kangaroos kicked inaccurately probably made it look better than what it was."
Melbourne again used a high number of interchanges but Bailey reiterated, after speaking about the subject in the lead-up to the match, that he hadn't planned on over 120 interchanges against the Roos.
"It had a good affect last week. Today it was disappointing," Bailey said.
"We don't go out to achieve a certain number of rotations, but the theory is, if you can rotate strongly enough, then hopefully you'll keep your players fitter and at a higher intensity and really they should make good decisions on the ground.
"Today we rotated enough, but the decisions we made on the ground were poor - they were almost like the first and second game we played - but we need to get back onto the track and train, and train those situations so that we can improve on them."
Bailey said further training was the only way to restore the players' confidence.
"You can't get it sitting in a room; you've got to get it on the training track," Bailey said.
Bailey notes that the more game-like scenarios the players experience at training, the less errors will be made during matches.
As for how the new Melbourne coach was handling the situation, Bailey suggested he was taking it all in his stride.
"It's a job you've just got to keep persisting at. You've just got to persist and persist and spend a lot of time at training and more time with the vision and the things will turn around - there's no doubt it will - but I'm going to be as upbeat as I can be," Bailey said.
"I'm going to try and assist and help players to become better players for our next week's game. We'll go through the tape and analyse it thoroughly, so that players are fully aware of the decisions that we should've made.
"We did make a little bit of it last week, but we've let ourselves down today and today was really about: 'Can we take the next step and build on from last week - regardless of who we played? Can we build on last week?' And we didn't do it.
"Today we didn't take another step forward and we should've and that's the disappointing thing."
