MELBOURNE has only itself to blame for extending the competition's longest – and most miserable – streak of missing finals to 11 seasons, co-captain Nathan Jones says.
Jones watched West Coast do just enough against minor premier Adelaide on Sunday night to leapfrog the tormented Demons into eighth position. He chose to do so by himself at home before commiserating later in the night with equally shattered teammates.
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A day earlier, Melbourne trailed a Collingwood side with little to play for by 32 points at quarter-time and spent the rest of the day chasing the Magpies in vain.
"It's a pretty bitter pill to swallow … digesting it after the Collingwood game, it was difficult to sit there for the following 24 hours when the result's in the lap of the gods," Jones said.
"You get what you put into this game – it's a ruthless competition – and I think looking back on it now, the culmination of results over the period of the season, rather than just the first quarter performance against Collingwood, has led us to this position.
"It's something we'll have to go away and work on (and), hopefully, it burns in the players' gut over the pre-season period and we don't find ourselves in that position again."
Jones, like the club's many critics, was scathing of the Demons' lethargic opening – highlighted by a meagre nine tackles to the first break – but said "inconsistencies" plagued his side all season.
The criticism was "fair", according to the hard-nosed midfielder, and the first-quarter display "didn't resemble anything like how we've performed at our best this season".
"We take full responsibility of that. I can't give you the exact reason why (it happened), but we'll review that," he said.
"You can't underestimate how good Collingwood were and, on the flipside of that, how poor we were in some of the fundamental areas of our game.
"Executing fundamentally around pressure and intensity and tackling – they're things that are well within our control."
Melbourne generated premiership hype after five wins in six matches between rounds eight and 14 vaulted Simon Goodwin's men to fifth spot.
But injuries at inopportune times, as well as underwhelming performances when expectation heightened, saw the Demons lose five of their last nine contests to end the season.
Jones' co-captain Jack Viney didn't play on Saturday, after his super-human effort to recover quicker than expected from a foot injury backfired and left him sidelined again with a similar problem.
"I couldn't be more optimistic about the future here," Jones said.
"We're in a terrific position, we've got a lot of young, talented players and a terrific coaching group, and I think we play the game the right way. But we're well aware of where we sit in our journey.
"There are going to be ups and downs and that can be quite frustrating at times, particularly to our supporters that have been through such a range of emotions and such a downward spiral over the past decade.
"The opportunity that was there this season, to see it slip like it has is, as I said, was a bitter pill to swallow, but hopefully it leaves us in a better position as a footy club.
