FREMANTLE coach Mark Harvey has demanded answers from his playing group in the wake of its stunning capitulation at the MCG on Sunday.

His side held a 51-point lead shortly before half-time, but Melbourne stormed to its first win of the season with a blistering 14 goals to four second half to leave Harvey asking some stern questions of his players.

“We’ve got to work out what we stand for as a football team quickly and, if not, I’ll sort it out,” Harvey said.

“We can’t have margins like that at half-time and, for various reasons, end up losing the game; it happens too much at this football club.

“Today we played four guys that hadn’t played at the MCG so it could be a little bit of [inexperience], but I don’t want to make too many excuses. The guys have got to work it out and judge themselves on what they do after half-time in games when it gets tough under pressure and why we let sides get momentum.

“Its how your players react to that situation and what they want to do about it that matters most.

“We’ve got to really sort this out and start to show killer instinct when it needs to be shown.”

Matthew Pavlich did his level best to drag his side over the line with three of his five goals coming after the main break, but Harvey was dismayed by the way the majority of his players went into their shells under pressure.

“I think when you have a younger group they can tend to go a bit quiet and lose direction, but too often we have relied on the normal guys to actually [do something]; today was a classic example with Pavlich and [Luke] McPharlin, until he got injured,” he said, lamenting the corked buttock that prevented the defender from continuing his excellent job on Demon danger man Russell Robertson in the final term.

“We couldn’t get our hands on the ball after half-time; if you have a look at the statistics they were phenomenonally Melbourne’s way and our guys have got to say ‘well how long are going to keep putting up with that?’

“When are we actually going to wake up and say ‘well who else is it going to be?’ because Pavlich is not going to be able to do that all the time.”

Harvey promised some hard decisions would be made as he assessed which players currently on his list would be the ones to carry the club forward, but he also refused to rule his side out of finals contention this season.

“What happens from now on is whoever really excels from here on in will make the finals,” he said.

“It’s whether we can string some games together. At the moment I think I’ve played 35 or 36 players, so I’ve played a lot of players. We’ll keep working through those situations and I will find out in the end who it is going to be.

“I’ll be working through the team aspect and individuals and whether they are worthy for selection; that’s what I’ll be working through.

“I haven’t been able to get my team together all year … we haven’t had stability in our side which is unfortunate. I had to make four or five changes from the Geelong game last week and that’s an issue because you just want players to get into routines.”

Harvey revealed his preparation for the match had taken a turn for the surreal when he received a phone call from an unlikely source.

“I knew I was in trouble when I got a phone call from Nathan Carroll on Thursday,” he said.

“He rang and left a message on my answering service saying ‘can I renew my membership with Melbourne?’”