Firstly, the umpires did not lose this game for us. Yes, they made a few terrible decisions late in the game, but the truth is, it shouldn't have been in the balance the way it was.

The reason we lost today was because we didn't capatalise on a number of oppurtunities. Quite a few. We weren't direct as many times as we should have been and we turned it over doing over-handballing and ring-a-rosey in the same way we have done in the 8 rounds. In other words, we over possessed the ball because of a lack of confidence going forward, or a lack of an open forward leading towards the ball. Also, several chances in front of goal were sprayed and/or missed.

Hawthorn didn't play bad today. What happened was we were able to hold their forward line for a good 80% of the match and stop their tall forwards from getting easy grabs. Even when the Hawks had the run, we were able to get numbers back and run it out. Our run out of the backline today was the best I've seen from Melbourne in over a year.

So, we were able to stop Hawthorn from scoring at will. Our backline played very well considering Rivers, Whealan, Wheatley and Carroll were all out. Great signs of things to come.

All in all, it was a fantastic effort, but we should have finished them off when we were 14 points a head and piled on a few more goals. We made it difficult for ourselves and made silly decisions, but thems to the breaks for such a young team. They'll learn from today.

And yeah, the umps hurt us at critical times, but we didn't HAVE to be in the position anyway. Had we taken advantage of poor Hawthorn form and great run out of the backline more frequently then we did, we would have been far more a head, which hopefully would have stopped the Hawks.

Firstly, the umpires did not lose this game for us. Yes, they made a few terrible decisions late in the game, but the truth is, it shouldn't have been in the balance the way it was.

The reason we lost today was because we didn't capatalise on a number of oppurtunities. Quite a few. We weren't direct as many times as we should have been and we turned it over doing over-handballing and ring-a-rosey in the same way we have done in the 8 rounds. In other words, we over possessed the ball because of a lack of confidence going forward, or a lack of an open forward leading towards the ball. Also, several chances in front of goal were sprayed and/or missed.

Hawthorn didn't play bad today. What happened was we were able to hold their forward line for a good 80% of the match and stop their tall forwards from getting easy grabs. Even when the Hawks had the run, we were able to get numbers back and run it out. Our run out of the backline today was the best I've seen from Melbourne in over a year.

So, we were able to stop Hawthorn from scoring at will. Our backline played very well considering Rivers, Whealan, Wheatley and Carroll were all out. Great signs of things to come.

All in all, it was a fantastic effort, but we should have finished them off when we were 14 points a head and piled on a few more goals. We made it difficult for ourselves and made silly decisions, but thems to the breaks for such a young team. They'll learn from today.

And yeah, the umps hurt us at critical times, but we didn't HAVE to be in the position anyway. Had we taken advantage of poor Hawthorn form and great run out of the backline more frequently then we did, we would have been far more a head, which hopefully would have stopped the Hawks.

I can say how we lost its simple.

they scored more than us.

we played well

Melbourne also allowed Hawthorn too many centre clearances, especially at times when Melbourne had the run on. Hawthorn centre three (today they were missing at least Hodge, Crawford) of Bateman, Sewell and Mitchell are playing well this year, but they are still behind the best of Geelong, Brisbane, Sydney and probably more.