Melbourne ruckman Paul Johnson will miss the AFL club's next four matches after breaking his hand.

Johnson had surgery on Monday night to repair a fracture sustained during the second quarter of Sunday's match against Geelong.

"It's bad luck for Paul, who has been in good form over the past few weeks," Demons football manager Ross Monaghan said.

Despite that setback, coach Dean Bailey said there was a growing air of optimism and confidence around the club heading into Sunday's MCG meeting with North Melbourne.

After players were shaken by consecutive thrashings in the opening two rounds, the coach saw some signs in Sunday's 30-point loss to the Cats that the gameplan is starting to gel for his team.

"Some of the things we've been practising for the last couple weeks came through on the weekend, so they're actually looking forward to this game, which is really good," Bailey said.

"The review's been good and the players have a bit of confidence back.

"We've taken a good sized step this week and we need to make sure we continue to improve this week."

But asked about the prospects of notching his first win, he instead stressed the need for his team to simply maintain a competitive attitude for an entire match.

"Competitive is still a good word to keep using, we were competitive for 85 per cent of the game (against Geelong), 15 per cent we weren't," he said.

"When you get into that competitive mindset, you've got to be competitive every week."

Bailey said the Kangaroos had the talent in their midfield and attack to punish Melbourne badly if they dropped their guard at all on Saturday.

"They've got great players in (Brent) Harvey, (Shannon) Grant and (Adam) Simpson," he said.

"They're very smart, they're well-orchestrated players, they're matchwinner's all three of them and have done it on a number of occasions.

"Their forward line, their talls, (Nathan) Thompson up forward looks like he's about due, I hope he's not due this week.

"(Aaron) Edwards at Casey Fields took some really good contested marks against us.

"And Corey Jones is a player who, although he seems to be out of a game for a while, all of a sudden he'll pop up at the end of the game and he's kicked three or four.

"They've got some really dangerous forwards who can light up pretty quick, we've got to be fairly careful about how we approach them.

"Their form hasn't been too bad, I think they're going to be a real challenge this week for us."

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