MELBOURNE coach Dean Bailey had no excuses for his side's 78-point loss to Port Adelaide on Saturday, describing it as one of its worst performances of the year.
The Demons trailed all afternoon, burdened by poor disposal, and conceded eight goals in the final term.
"It was really poor – really poor," Bailey said after the match. "Not competitive enough for long enough.
"That would be in our top three or four really poor efforts I would have thought for the whole year – back to the Bulldogs and Hawthorn games at the start of the year. We just didn’t look in the game.
"We missed tackles every time we turned the ball over; we couldn’t hit a target with our skills. We were flat-footed.
"[It was] really disappointing. We lacked in a lot of areas today.
"We were fortunate that we actually were not beaten by more I would think."
Bailey refused to use either youth or travel as the reason for the performance.
"[Even] with a young group there are no excuses. You still expect a Melbourne player to go out there and play with vigour and play with some real aggression," he said.
"At the end of the day that’s no excuse – age, games played, all those things are no excuse, you just expect people to be competitive. You expect players to be competitive on the ground and we weren’t today.
"Interstate travel is all about your attitude, that’s all it is," he added. "If you’ve got the right attitude and come with a real desire to perform well then you’re competitive. It doesn’t matter where you play.
"It was 14th versus 16th on the ladder, and we came over expecting to play a lot better than we did.
"[Our supporters] will be really hurting and really disappointed with the effort today.
"After last week’s performance I’m sure we all expected a better effort today, but we didn’t deliver. And you’ve got to deliver for two hours, 22 times in the home and away season, and if you’re good enough you get to play finals."
Bailey said veterans Jeff White and Adem Yze deserved to be selected for the match, based on form with VFL side Sandringham, but he wouldn't guarantee their futures despite serviceable performances.
"They were in good form [in the VFL], but we didn’t have too many winners on the ground today," Bailey said.
"I thought only (Daniel) Bell – I think Bell tried hard – and I thought (Matthew) Whelan had a couple of efforts that were good. But outside of that I don’t think we won too many other positions on the ground.
"We’ll sit down with Jeff next week and we’ll make a decision on where we see Jeff’s future … that will be decided probably early in the week."
