Melbourne AFL recruit Chris Dawes is promising supporters the Demons won’t lapse into another lacklustre display like the one they gave in last week’s embarrassing loss to Gold Coast.

The Demons suffered their seventh loss from eight rounds on Sunday at the MCG against Richmond, but Melbourne gave a good account of themselves against a top-eight side.

Richmond led by only seven points at halftime and struggled to establish a big margin against the lowly Demons, winning 15.16 (106) to 11.6 (72).

Dawes gave an encouraging performance in his second game with the Demons, pulling down seven marks and kicking two goals.

The 2010 Collingwood premiership forward defended coach Mark Neeld, who copped a hammering in the media following Melbourne’s 10-goal defeat against Gold Coast.

“Coaches shouldn’t have to coach effort at AFL level,” Dawes said on Sunday.

“That won’t happen again. That sort of lack of effort that we saw last week, tonight was the first step towards (improving on) that.

“We can take confidence but we can’t accept that. Yeah the effort was better but it should be at AFL level.

“We competed hard. We put ourselves in a position to win but we couldn’t win so we can’t accept that.”

The 73-game veteran Dawes admitted last week’s effort was frustrating.

“It’s not just me. The senior players, anyone who plays in a side that lacks effort is going to get frustrated,” he said.

“The fact that we have to re-visit that sort of thing, when anyone playing AFL would assume that (effort) is a given, that’s the most frustrating thing.”

Neeld said he was pleased with Melbourne’s 67-65 win in the tackle-count statistic after being out-tackled 71-38 by Gold Coast.

“We’ve had one week where people could question the effort of us, over a five-week period, so that’s not too bad,” Neeld said.

Neeld said defender Jack Watts was likely to return from injury for next Sunday’s game against Fremantle in Perth.

AAP ga