Melbourne's clearances and contested ball were the primary reasons for their loss to Hawthorn on Sunday, according to coach Dean Bailey.
In a tight contest that could have gone either way, the Demons eventually fell away in the final quarter to effectively end their hopes of playing finals footy.
Hawthorn won the clearances 52-41 with the most significant one happening in the closing stages with star Hawk Shaun Burgoyne able to waltz into an open goal from a boundary throw in and Bailey admitted that was a major area of concern heading into match.
"Our back stoppage stuff, their forward stoppage stuff really cost us," Bailey said.
"A couple of their clearances were quite good, they were certainly inside some of our games. We'll look at the tape and that's something we'll make sure doesn't happen next week."
"I think we might have just pipped them in the tackles, but I think the clearances and contested possessions were clearly in their favour."
"We went into the game wanting to be competitive around those two areas and unfortunately at the end of the game they're the two areas that we didn't get close enough in."
The Demons hit the front twice in the third quarter but on both occasions they gave up a quick goal, much to the disappointment of Bailey.
"When we hit the front we would have liked to have probably ground out four or five minutes of really competitive work and make it a real battle," he said.
"And we probably dropped away a little, they kicked a couple after that to get themselves back into the game."
"When we were in front we probably needed to work a bit harder to really control it from there on, which we were unable to do and hence the result we got.
Further compounding the loss was the injury to 2009 Best and Fairest winner Aaron Davey, who left the field at the start of the second quarter with a suspected broken fibula.
Scans on Monday will confirm the full extent of the injury, but Bailey admitted the club fears the worst.
The Melbourne coach still found some of positives in the loss and saw plenty of improvement from earlier in the season when his side were thrashed by the Hawks.
"I thought we started okay … we sought of hung in there a bit in the second quarter, they probably had some opportunities that they didn't take and second half was a struggle for us," he said.
"I thought our guys just hung in there, kept chipping away at it which was a good sign."
"We've improved from Round 1 … Round 1 was 56 points, that was a really ordinary game so you'd like to think where we are now we'd have to have improved so we've certainly improved."