At their very best, Simon Goodwin’s Demons would fight hand to hand, square metre by square metre. Their midfielders were like snorting bulls. Their ruckman was peerless. Their key defenders would patrol and gobble, deny and thwart. In just under an hour, it all came together in a flawless, torrential, still scarcely believable flood of goals.
At their very worst, Goodwin’s Demons were rigid, predictable, boring. They would blast and hope. They’d win the inside 50s and contested possession count and lose the match. While the rest of us stifled yawns, Goodwin would shrug his shoulders, shuffle his papers and talk about “learnings” and “contest and defence” and “honest conversations”. A week later, they’d be losing the same way and he’d be saying the same things.
But the very worst of what was happening had nothing to with the gameplan or the forward connection. It was the club itself. It was the way they were constantly having to douse fires. It was the teammates brawling outside restaurants. It was the investigative reporters looking for dirt. It was the independent politicians potting them under parliamentary privilege. It was the allegations of drug use. It was the shoddy messaging. It was the leaks. It was the leadership vacuum.
Last summer, they were desperate for a clean slate. They thrashed it all out at the foot of Melbourne’s snowfields. There was talk of “trauma”, of “cleansing” and lots of tears, hugs and vows to start anew. They locked down a new theme for the year – Love. Play. Celebrate. Forgive my cynicism, but it sounded like the intersection of LinkedIn and a MAFS dinner party.
They promptly went and lost their first five games. “It’ll turn,” Goodwin insisted. And they played some excellent football, beating Brisbane at the Gabba, smashing Sydney and running Collingwood and Adelaide close. But then they encountered Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera. As the St Kilda star played one of the great individual quarters, Melbourne’s leaders, on the field and on the bench, looked like they didn’t know what day it was.
Everything always seemed so laboured at Melbourne. Everything – from the way they’d win the ball, to the way they’d move it, to the way they’d explain themselves afterwards – seemed like hard work. And with the chair on holiday and the CEO yet to start his role, so much of the burden fell on Max Gawn. After each loss, he’d gather his team, peer down on them and nod towards the race. Sometimes he’d cop the abuse from the performative clowns filming their own rants. He had to then stick up for the coach, the gameplan, his wayward teammates. He had to be president, CEO, champion player, diffuser and marketer. He then had to go on radio with the likes of Marty Sheargold and gently flick him down to fine leg.
Ten weeks after their premiership, in the first week of summer, the Melbourne faithful gathered at the MCG. It wasn’t like the drunken euphoria at the Whitten Oval in 2016, or the bonnet-hopping mayhem on Swan Street the following year. It was clearer, more sober. It had sunk in by now. They watched the replay and started cheering four or five seconds before each goal. This time, the coach wasn’t bumped off stage by the mayor of Perth. Goodwin stressed the importance of capitalising on their talent, their youth, and of winning a flag at the MCG in front of their fans.
But they never got there. This was a distracted, scrambling club. They paid big bucks for Brodie Grundy, who ended up adrift in the system, playing in mini typhoons out at Casey Fields. They lost four finals by a total of 40 points. Against Collingwood in 2023, they had 32 more inside 50s. But they shot themselves in the foot with dinky little nine iron lobs, shanks out on the full, forwards barrelling into one another. A week later, they had 10 more scoring shots than Carlton. They had a goal annulled. Their last five shots on goal were behinds. And they frittered away so many others.
None of this should detract from what Goodwin achieved in 2021, and what he will mean to this club for decades to come. And he deserves enormous credit for maintaining his dignity amid all the rumours, the spot fires and the chaos around him. But there will always be the nagging question of what could and should have been – if the club was stable, if its leaders could use proper sentences, if Angus Brayshaw hadn’t been knocked into retirement, if his players could kick straight, if they could convert midfield dominance into goals. Some of that was clearly beyond his control. But too often it was the result of unimaginative coaching, of a gameplan from another place and time, a gameplan that gradually wore his players down and ultimately marked his card.
This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions
