The Thunder failed to score for the third match in a row, but Jeffrey was pleased with the endeavour shown by his players in the 33.27 (225) to 0.0 (0) loss to Victorian Women’s Football League power Melbourne Uni at the QEO.

“The girls are learning on the job,’’ Jeffrey said.

“The best teams in this competition are a long way ahead of us and we as a club are looking at the future.

“It’s the little things that we’re looking at and we certainly saw some improvements on Saturday.

“Our tackling was much better and the ball use that we had was better.

“I was very pleased with the attitude of the girls.”

Alana Mcnabb was clearly the Thunder’s best player.

“She started on the ball and then moved to the backline and she did everything she could to get us into attack,’’ Jeffrey said.

“Erin Hopkins did well at full-back as well.

“Melbourne Uni’s full-forward kicked four goals in the first half, but then Erin kept her quiet from then on and the full-forward was eventually taken from the ground.”

On-baller Emma Grant impressed for the Thunder as did Jess Blake and Melanie Krause.

“Melbourne Uni is probably four or five goals away from Darebin and Darebin beat us by 14 more goals than Melbourne Uni did,’’ Jeffrey said.

“So in that sense we’ve made some improvement in the past few weeks.

“We’ve played the best three teams in the league the first three weeks. We’ll get some easier opponents in the next few weeks.”

The Thinder forward half should be bolstered next week by the return of tall forwards Ingrid Hopkins and Amy Sidebottom.