Still winless after four pre-season outings, first-year Melbourne coach Dean Bailey's assessment of the Demons' 51-point NAB Challenge series loss to North Melbourne at Casey Fields on Saturday was short and painfully honest.

"Very disappointing, a very disappointing day," he told the media in the race minutes after the final siren.

"Not a lot of positives to come out of it; very disappointing."

"We allowed too many goals to be kicked against us; we turned the ball over too much … we just coughed it up too much today and missed tackles."

After an even first term, the Demons were outscored by 16 goals to eight and were flattered by notching the final four goals of the match including three to Russell Robertson when the contest was well and truly lost.

The Demons have Cameron Bruce, Ben Holland, Lynden Dunn, Paul Wheatley, Jared Rivers and Matthew Whelan, none of whom played on Saturday, to bring back, but they're all short of match fitness after taking little or no part in competition over the past month.

Bailey agrees it will be a race against time to get his squad ready for the Easter Sunday clash against Hawthorn and he expects to make good use of next week's VFL outing to inject some critical game time.

"At least we'll have close to a full list to pick from come Round 1 and hopefully of that full list we'll have the fittest blokes of that," he said.

"That's a really good sign, that we've actually got a list that's getting closer to fitness."

"We need to get them fit before we can do anything, we need them fit and up and going."

One player Bailey looks likely to be without is Matthew Bate who strained a hamstring against the Kangaroos, but skipper David Neitz, who appeared to injure a shoulder on Saturday apparently suffered nothing more serious than a 'stinger'.

"He just got a knock on the shoulder but after a couple of minutes he said it was fine," Bailey said.

"The physio went out and checked on him but he basically waved him away so he seems alright."

Quizzed about the efforts of a handful of players who at least held their own against the Kangaroos, Bailey said he was not prepared to credit individuals for good performances in a losing side.

"We didn’t have enough players play well," he said.

"Rather than being an individual game, as a team we didn't win - we didn’t play well enough."

And asked whether he believes his team can turn it around in a fortnight, he replied: "We have to; we have to turn it around."