A finals berth would have become a real possibility for the young Dees had they prevailed, but Bailey was left to lament some key lapses in concentration that proved costly in a match they led midway through the third quarter.
“The players are really disappointed that they couldn’t hang in there longer,” Bailey said after the Demons slipped to a 21-point defeat.
“When we were in front we just needed to probably work a bit harder to control it a bit which we were unable to do. Hence the result we got.
“They are really important experiences for them to go through the hard times, but also to learn from them as well. From that point of view that’s terrific but winning games would have been nice today, no question.”
Bailey identified tackles and the contested ball as the two areas of the game he would be watching closely in the lead-in to the match and he got mixed results.
“I think we just pipped them in the tackles, but the clearances and the contested possessions were clearly in their favour,” he said.
“We went into the game wanting to be competitive in those two areas and unfortunately at the end of the game they’re the two areas we didn’t get close enough in.
“A couple of their clearances were quite good and they were certainly inside some of our guys so we’ll look at the tape and analyse that. That will be something that we’ll talk about on Monday to make sure that it doesn’t happen again next week.”
Melbourne lost Aaron Davey to a suspected fractured leg early in the game, but Bailey refused to use that as an excuse for his side’s inability to finish the game strongly.
Hawthorn handed the Demons a 56-point thrashing in round one of the season and while Sunday’s result was nowhere near as humbling, Bailey took little solace from it.
“We’ve improved from round one ... that was a really ordinary game, so you’d like to think come by where we are now we would have to have improved,” he said.
“We’ve certainly improved, but to still not be close enough for long enough is probably the disappointing thing out of the game.”
