Sunday’s Easter clash against Gold Coast will be a measuring stick for Melbourne according to new Demons coach, Paul Roos. 

“We had a good game against Richmond in the NAB Challenge and we played pretty well against Geelong and then it fell apart the following week against the Hawks,” Roos told melbournefc.com.au.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing the team play and hopefully they can play with the effort they did and with the adherence to our game rules that they did on the weekend.”

The Demons’ 23-point win over Carlton in round 4 gave the Melbourne playing group a much-needed confidence boost after going through the opening rounds of the new season winless.

Charged with the responsibility of leading the Demons into their next phase of growth and success, many AFL analysts believe the architect behind Sydney’s famous “bloods” culture has the toughest senior post in Australian sport.

While Gold Coast poses a serious threat to the Demons’ chances of building on last weekend’s celebrations, the 2005 premiership coach believes his team is on the right track. 

“When a new coach comes in with a new game style and a lot of discussions about that and how it works, players need a win to get some confidence and get some belief,” he said.

“We don’t think we’ve been playing that poorly apart from the West Coast game, but it’s just getting over the hump. Watching the game over the weekend, it was chalk and cheese to our first three games – we felt as a coaching group.

“The effort was very, very good for 120 minutes. We stuck to our structures and we stuck to what we wanted to do and the players got a great reward for it and it reinforces to them that if they keep doing those things, they can be really competitive.”

After their successful switch from backline to attack against the Navy Blues, Roos said All Australian defender James Frawley and key backman Lynden Dunn will remain in the forward line. 

“It’s been significantly different. I felt it was a big change – even in the Giants game, we had someone to kick to. In the previous week against the Eagles, there was just no one to go to and without making excuses. I think we’ve seen now what a difference it is when you have two or three guys up there,” he said.

“We were certainly able to go longer and quicker – and we didn’t over possess the ball like we’d done in the first two or three weeks. It was a vastly different game style offensively.

 “The main thing for us is getting our defensive processes in place and making sure we’re competitive every minute of every game.”