Melbourne coach Mark Neeld praises effort after loss

MELBOURNE coach Mark Neeld said he could not fault the effort of his players in the 35-point loss to Richmond at the MCG.

MELBOURNE coach Mark Neeld said he could not fault the effort of his players in the 35-point loss to Richmond at the MCG.

But key forward Chris Dawes again put the acid on his teammates by saying that losses, regardless of effort, were unacceptable.

The Demons won the tackle count 67-65 and made the Tigers - now 5-3 - fight until the last quarter.

Cubs spark Tigers win

Neeld said he observed his players "enjoying themselves and having a crack" for most of the day.

"We realise at some stages that there will be some peaks and troughs," he said.

"We've just got to make sure the troughs aren't too low."

Dawes agreed the effort was better, "but it should be at AFL level".

Melbourne v Richmond

"We competed hard, we put ourselves in a position to win, but we couldn't win so we can't accept that," he said.

"Now we've got to train ourselves to be better so that we can start winning games."

Richmond coach Damien Hardwick said his team's conversion rate - 15.16 - had to improve for Saturday night's blockbuster against Essendon.

"We certainly didn't make the most of our chances going inside 50," Hardwick said.

"That's probably the big one for us. If we had have put our chances on the board early, it certainly gets the game more in your court, so to speak.

"They kicked 7.2 in the first half whereas we've kicked more points than they've had shots."

Neeld described Jimmy Toumpas's ankle injury as "not severe", but conceded the No.4 draft pick would miss Sunday's game against Fremantle in Perth.

Toumpas

Richmond will regain Ivan Maric and Chris Newman for the Bombers game.

Hardwick was frustrated that his defence allowed the Demons to score with 50 per cent of their 34 inside-50s.

"You probably look at the source of those goals, I reckon there were a couple of free kicks, a couple of undisciplined plays, a couple of errors by our boys," he said.

"You can't afford to give up easy goals."