Melbourne coach Dean Bailey bemoaned the frustrating lack of consistency by the Demons after they were humiliated by 88 points by Collingwood on Monday in their biggest match of the AFL season.

In front of a huge crowd of 75,998 at the MCG in the annual Queen's Birthday fixture, the Demons conceded the last eight goals of the match to the rampaging Magpies as they were belted 19.15 (129) to 6.5 (41).

Travis Cloke (six goals) and Sharrod Wellingham (37 possessions) both had career highs for the reigning premiers who made light of the absence of stars Dane Swan, Darren Jolly, Dale Thomas and Dayne Beams.

In the space of three rollercoaster weeks, the Demons have been belted by 47 points by Carlton, enjoyed an emotion-charged 33-point win over Essendon and now been taken to the cleaners by Collingwood.

"There was a lot for us to play for today, an enormous amount of opportunity on the end of today's result and we sit here very, very disappointed with the effort - it's just not good enough," said Bailey.

"Regardless of last week's result you get measured on the following week and we were very, very poor today in all the key areas of the game, the fundamentals of the game.

"We coughed the ball up , we didn't win enough of our share of contested possession and the inside 50 count was all one-way traffic."

".... There's no consistency today, absolutely.

"It was an extremely poor effort in front of a large crowd on a really important day for us."

Among the more damning statistics for Melbourne was the inside 50 count of 74-34, while the Magpies also dominated the contested possessions 168 to 123.;

"The over-use of handball is something that really showed up today," said Bailey.

"Collingwood are a very good football team, they pressure particularly well, and what they pressured us on was the contested possession and we had some cough-up handballs.

"Our fundamentals of the game, our contested possession and our skill level was really poor."

The loss saw the Demons slip to 10th on the ladder, a game and a large swag of percentage out of the top eight.

After a big three weeks, their draw opens up somewhat with winnable games against Fremantle at the MCG, Richmond and the Western Bulldogs next on the agenda before the bye in round 16.

Bailey forecast several changes to the lineup for the pivotal clash against the Dockers on Sunday.

Forwards Lynden Dunn and Ricky Petterd and key defenders Colin Garland and Matthew Warnock are all pushing hard for recalls after impressive outings in the VFL over the weekend.

"We'll keep making a few changes to the team and keep challenging the guys who are in the team from last week who played today, they've got to lift their work-rate," said Bailey.

"It comes down to work-rate most of the time , work-rate off the ball when you don't have it, to work-rate when you've got it and being predictable to each other.

"The biggest lesson out of today is how far we've got to go to compete with the reigning premiers and a team who are going to be around for a number of years yet."

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