Just over seven years ago, Geelong defeated Melbourne by 186 points. It’s hard to imagine that a football team has ever played better than Geelong that day. Their winning margin was the second highest in VFL/AFL history. It was their 28th straight win at Kardinia Park. Steve Johnson played one of the great individual games.
For Melbourne, it was a dog of an afternoon. They managed just 43 possessions in the second quarter. Brent Moloney had the flu and was tagged by Cameron Ling. At half-time, he was subbed off, having failed to register a possession. He was led up the players race like a man who’d been rescued from the surf. He then fell asleep in the change-rooms.
“Is that the worst loss you've been associated with?” Dean Bailey was asked at the press conference. Bailey looked at the reporter like he was from outer space. “That's a serious question?” he finally replied.
Forty-eight hours later, an ailing Jim Stynes announced Bailey’s sacking. His replacement came highly recommended by Mick Malthouse. Mark Neeld was a hard man. He dumped captain Brad Green. Moloney was quickly on the outer. There’d be no more “bruise-free” football, he warned. Melbourne, he said, would be the hardest team in the competition to play against.
Two weeks before the 2012 season opener, Stynes died. Four days after his funeral, there was a minute’s applause at the MCG. But the Demons didn’t fire a shot. That was the trend for the next year and a bit. A generation of high draft picks were lambs to the slaughter. The scale of the losses, the haemorrhaging of talent and the all-round awfulness of it all was unprecedented.
Neeld was sacked and flew to Ko Samui for a yoga retreat. His eventual replacement, Paul Roos, was shocked at how psychologically scarred the players were. “They were almost like the lost boy at the market asking, ‘how do I find mum?’” he later said.
Jack Watts told him: “I just want to be treated like a human being again.”
His first training session was a fiasco. The first half dozen kicks missed their target. Jack Fitzpatrick attempted a kick and the ball completely missed his boot. Roos set about stiffening up the defence, creating a more harmonious environment and preparing to handover to his assistant Simon Goodwin.
The losses continued to pile up. But there was the occasional ray of hope. Max Gawn blossomed. He’d been partial to a dart and a bender. He’d ruptured two ACLs. He looked like he should have been driving monster trucks. But in 2015, he had a breakout game at Kardinia Park, the day of Corey Enright’s 300th. He was fierce, talented and rucked all day. He was everything Melbourne hadn’t been for a decade.
In 2017, under Goodwin, they looked headed for the double chance. In Clayton Oliver, they had a once-in-a-generation midfielder. He’d been a draft bolter. At school, he wanted to become a radiographer. He looked like an urchin from a Dickens novel. But he was relentless. In just his second year, he won the best and fairest by 184 votes.
Still, they pissed it away in the final round, losing to one of the worst Collingwood teams in years. Over the summer, they scrapped a commando-style training event because of player safety concerns. The previous year, sleep deprived and living on army biscuits, Christian Salem had been sconned by a brick and knocked out. To the old school brigade, cancelling the camp sent all the wrong messages. Danny Frawley, of all people, called them a “laughing stock”.
No one plays a club into form quite like Frawley. At times this year, they looked irresistible. In one five-week stretch, they had a percentage of over 200. They were crisp, bold and great to watch. They had more forward entries than any side since the Bombers of 2000. But they couldn’t cash in. And they couldn’t beat anyone of note.
At Kardinia Park, as drunken halfwits brawled on the Gary Ablett Terrace, the Cats kicked eight straight to 3.5 in the final term. But unless the margin is 31 goals, getting beaten down there isn’t the end of the world. In recent seasons, Richmond and the Dogs both travelled to Geelong late in the season, lost gamely and ended up winning the premiership.
Whenever the Dees faced anything verging on a defining game however, they’d fold up. Against Sydney at the MCG, they had everything to play for, everything to prove, got off to a flying start, had a stack of scoring shots, and made a marvellous mess of it.
But sometimes all you need is one win. They completely dominated West Coast in Perth but somehow found themselves behind at the 19-minute mark of the final term. Lose this, you suspected, and the arse would have completely fallen out of the place. West Coast’s infantile supporters were whinging and booing and carrying on. But the Demons kept coming. Finally, there was poise, some big bodies and some mature heads. A weight had been lifted. Chris Judd says they celebrated too hard. But they backed up and made mincemeat of GWS, booking a date with Geelong.
The Cats have Brownlow medallists, All-Australian captains and premiership players galore. They have a 16-1 formline against the Dees. But they're vulnerable. They have a wretched record coming off the bye. They had two soft kills against sides that may as well have been on holiday. And they have a 27-year-old former apprentice electrician taking on Gawn.
Increasingly, football is about catching the wave around the middle of August. There’s a sense that Melbourne have figured it all out at exactly the right time, the way Richmond did last year. But can they be trusted? Do they trust themselves? Have they exorcised the demons of 2011?
