Melbourne captain Max Gawn leads his team from the MCG on Saturday after its heavy loss to Gold Coast. Photo: AFL MEDIA
It might only be Round 3, but Melbourne already looks like a club at the crossroads.
Having now suffered back-to-back 10-goal pummellings on the way to being 0-3 for the first time in six years, the Demons’ 2025 campaign appears to be teetering on the precipice after barely getting underway.
If the trouncing they copped at the hands of North Melbourne last week wasn’t bad enough, then the football lesson they received from another finals-starved side in Gold Coast on Saturday was nothing short of alarming.
When the Demons were at their peak under Simon Goodwin, they cultivated the hard-earned reputation of being one of the toughest and most uncompromising teams in the league, and the star-studded midfield of Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver, Jack Viney and Max Gawn set the tone for that at the coal face. It delivered them a flag in 2021.
Yet on the weekend they were absolutely bossed around by the hungrier up-and-coming Suns on-ball brigade, led by star duo Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson, and were smashed in clearances 40-24, centre clearances 16-8, contested possessions 144-126 and forward entries 65-40.
While the footy world got a taste of the depths Melbourne was capable of plummeting to in the final quarter against the Kangaroos the previous round, it was still startling to see just how unwilling the Demons were to work their backsides off for large portions against Gold Coast.
The Suns were allowed to do as they pleased for the vast majority of the game under minimal pressure, while the Demons’ deplorable skill errors exacerbated the situation.
When Melbourne’s biggest weapon of ferocity in the clinches misfires, there isn’t a whole lot more that the team can offer up to threaten to win a game of football.
It’s only a small sample size, but after three rounds, based on differentials, the Demons rank second-last in the competition for clearances, 16th for centre clearances, fourth-bottom for disposals and 13th for contested possessions, tackles and inside 50s.
That would be chilling to Goodwin’s bone because it suggests not much has changed from last year when they ranked 16th for clearances and 15th for disposals, centre clearances and inside 50s. Their woeful midfield-forward connection and attacking efficiency is apparent yet again too as it has been for the last few seasons.
But perhaps most shocking of all is the fact that not only were the Demons not switched on against Gold Coast, but their body language was horrible. In fact, it looked like they just didn’t care – neither for the team as a whole, or each other.
When you get to that point, it’s basically impossible to come back from.
And when one thinks about it, it really should not be that surprising.
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For the past three years, the club has been managing crisis after crisis. It all began with the long-running feud with former president Glen Bartlett which was followed a few months later by a fist fight between teammates Steven May and Jake Melksham outside a Prahran restaurant.
And things have really ramped up in the last 12 to 18 months with Joel Smith’s positive drug test, the ongoing off-field issues that Oliver has been dealing with, which led to him being shopped around last year and almost join Geelong, and the gargantuan bombshell Petracca dropped by declaring he wanted to be traded after just two years into a seven-season deal. The handling of his serious injuries suffered against Collingwood on King’s Birthday last year certainly played their part in that.
There’s also the persistent speculation surrounding the future of another star Kysaiah Pickett, who reportedly wants to head back to WA to continue his footy career.
With all of that as a backdrop, following the 2023 season, former CEO Gary Pert declared he had never seen a better club culture than the one he saw at the Demons. Well, 12 months later Pert was gone, and so was president Kate Roffey.
Chuck in a pair of straight-sets finals exits, the devastating early retirement of beloved son Angus Brayshaw (which of course is no fault of the club’s), and Melbourne does not present itself as a happy club at all.
One would have to think that personal relationships within the team would have been strained, perhaps irreparably in some cases, and it shows in the way they have played in the past couple of weeks in particular.
This writer gave the Demons an outside chance of contending for a premiership this year if they were capable of putting all of that considerable drama behind them and commit to each other to pull in the same direction one last time, because there’s no doubt they have still have enough star power to contend. But it just seems as though the issues are too hard to overcome.
The club might have fractured so badly in recent years that when the going gets tough, as it has against North and Gold Coast, the players might very look around at their teammates and think there’s no point fighting hard and digging deep anymore.
The Demons have tried to course-correct and implement a new outlook for the 2025 season based on love for each other and the club. But none of that was apparent at all in the past two matches. And for that to be the case so early into the life of that mantra infers that all is not well at Demonland.
If these kind of performances continue over the next month or so, it may very well be the case that the club has run its race with this current crop of players and coaches, and a clean slate might have to be implemented as soon as possible.
With Geelong at Kardinia Park next up, that process could be expedited because the Demons will be staring down the barrel of an 0-4 start to the year, and it would be hard to see any way back from that.
