Phoenix "heading in right direction": Kelly

South East Melbourne head coach Mike Kelly has asserted his side is “definitely going in the right direction”, despite Thursday’s 28-point loss to local rivals Melbourne United.

The Phoenix did not lead the game at any point, and entered the quarter-time break on the wrong side of a 17-point margin.

They only scored above 20 points in one of the game's four quarters, as the ladder-leading Melbourne strolled to its highest score of the season so far, and the defeat has marked the first time the Phoenix have been swept in the regular season by their rivals.

“The thing I’m encouraged by is up until tonight we’ve been making fewer mistakes I think are going to damage us down the stretch, defensively especially,” Kelly reflected post-game.

“Tonight was bad, so I need to watch it before I comment too much, but I thought in Sydney we made some defensive mistakes but we still, for the most part, were playing the way we want to play.

“I take encouragement from that and if we can consistently say we’re doing that we’re going in the right direction. We took some hits early that we can’t overcome right now except by winning games.

“As long as we keep doing that – it’s not just looking at today, it’s not just looking at tomorrow, it’s looking at the big picture of the season and we’re definitely going in the right direction.”

Kelly says despite his belief his side is trending in the right direction, he knows they performed poorly in what had been built up as a vital Throwdown clash in the context of the season, but he will refrain from passing full judgement until he’s watched the game back.

“I saw the guys in and said ‘let’s get ready for Illawarra’. I don’t want to tell the guys they did this well or did this poorly without watching it again,” Kelly said.

“We know we did some things very poorly, but until we break it down the message to the guys is ‘we didn’t play well, we have to be better, Melbourne’s really good, and let’s get ready for Illawarra’.

“I need to watch it, there’s a lot that went wrong. They were very good and we were pretty bad. Even when we were good we were bad.”

The Phoenix entered the clash without the services of the injured Craig Moller – who will miss the remainder of the season – and new import Abdel Nader, given his arrival in Australia only occurred earlier that morning.

The side’s consistent injury woes this season were only exacerbated by the sight of star forward Mitch Creek hobbling off the floor in the final quarter with an apparent knee issue.

Kelly says he’s unsure if Creek will take to the floor on Saturday against Illawarra.

“If it stays sore [he won’t play], I don’t know what it is exactly but he’s got a sore knee,” Kelly said.

“We’ll check that out and figure out what it is.”

South East Melbourne’s clash with Illawarra will tip off on Saturday at 5:30pm AEDT.