MELBOURNE coach Dean Bailey didn't emphasise it once, he emphasised it several times — his team, ultimately, had lost. But the Demons, who travelled to Geelong yesterday the rankest of rank underdogs but who left with their self-respect intact after a 30-point loss to the reigning premiers, had also enjoyed a couple of wins.

Skill errors and poor decision-making still littered Melbourne's game in what turned out to be a third consecutive defeat. But against the competition's benchmark side the problems proved not nearly as diabolical as they had in the Demons' previous two outings, which ended in 104- and 95-point losses, respectively.

"You look at the last two weeks we've played and we've actually probably moved forward a step today. But we're still getting beaten, it's still a loss," Bailey said.

"They (the players) can sit there today and say, 'At least we were competitive and have a look, we actually played OK, we just didn't play well enough for long enough'.

"I think everyone contributed. I think everyone actually was competitive for longer, which is good. It's what we asked for."

He described a pair of teenagers — Cale Morton, playing his third game, and Austin Wonaeamirri, who made his senior debut yesterday — as "shining lights" for the team.

Bailey defended the performance of the vastly more experienced Russell Robertson, who was called to the bench midway through the final term after scoring just one point for the afternoon.

Asked whether the club's three-time leading goalkicker had been dragged, Bailey said: "It was a bit of both. It was a bit of rotation; he was due to come off soon after that so we just pulled it a bit earlier.

"He's working hard enough, Robbo, but he's just not probably putting the score on the board, but his contribution during the game was still good. We still need more from all our players because we still got beaten."

Geelong coach Mark Thompson confessed he had found the lead-up to the meeting against the competition's bottom side slightly unnerving. The Cats were the shortest-priced favourite in the history of the game. And, as stirring classical music boomed through Skilled Stadium before the opening bounce yesterday, Geelong's VFL and AFL sides received a standing ovation as they lined up to watch the unfurling of the premiership flags they won last year.

"It was really hard when everybody in the world was saying we were going to win by 100 points; I knew that wasn't going to happen," Thompson said.

"They're (the Demons) sitting here watching us unfurl the flag and I know Dean would have been winding them up to come out and just hit us as hard as they could and it was always going to be a difficult day."

There was a certain intensity lacking in the Cats as Melbourne kicked the first three goals of the game. The home side had built a 17-point advantage by half-time, but that was modest given the contrasting current status of the two teams.

"We were hoping to get over them a bit earlier. It didn't happen, but in the end we've got the points, we've won four quarters of footy and we worked a few things out as the day went on and we were pretty happy to move on to next week," Thompson said.

"I'm glad we didn't start well … in the first half because it gave us something to work on in the second half.

"We certainly fixed up a lot of our game style and our processes in the second half and it was just a good build-up … to next week's game against St Kilda."