Melbourne players congratulate Latrelle Pickett after his first goal for the club on debut. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
I’ve written plenty of columns over the years about the dangers of “going the early crow” in an AFL season. This article isn’t the opposite of that by any means, but it is a recognition of sorts of the benefits of a bright start to a new football year.
Last Sunday featured two great examples of that, North Melbourne’s impressive 46-point win over Port Adelaide, and Melbourne’s exciting 13-point victory over St Kilda.
You had to be happy for the Roos, having won just 20 games from 90 over the previous six seasons. Melbourne’s win, meanwhile, in a very entertaining game indeed, was as notable for the noise and excitement palpable among the Demon fans as their team powered home for a first win under new coach Steven King.
It really did come across as a bit of a footballing catharsis, interesting in itself given that Melbourne won a long-awaited premiership less than five years ago.
Dees fans weren’t delivered a new dawn, however, a potential golden era dissolving into a mess of wasted opportunities, unhappy stars and some well-documented cultural issues, all along with continual debate about the rigid sort of game style pursued by former coach Simon Goodwin.
That last point was perhaps the biggest cause of the Demon army’s rejoicing last Sunday. That old defensive stodginess was gone. There were quick build-ups, genuine dash in the addition of a second Pickett, Kysaiah’s cousin Latrelle, the classy young Caleb Windsor, and a spearhead in Jacob Van Rooyen turning in easily the best game of his career with a six-goal haul.
All very heart-warming for the fans, sure. But was that just a nice little feel-good story before reality sets in, or is Melbourne really capable of something this season which the vast bulk of the football world wasn’t counting on? I’m not going out on a limb yet, but I do think it’s at least possible.
It’s easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater at times in AFL football, and it was pretty obvious that much of the pre-season focus in Melbourne’s case was going to be about what the Dees had lost in the departures of Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver, and the troubled retirement of Steven May.
Not for the first time in the world of AFL analysis, though, that concentration on the individual didn’t do enough justice to the power of the collective, nor did it read enough nuance into a superficially ugly bottom line of a 7-16 win-loss record and a finish of 14th.
While Melbourne won just two of its last 12 games last season (and 2-10 looks ugly, no doubt) five of those 10 defeats were by single figure margins and none by any more than six goals. The Demons’ percentage was far superior to any other team which finished bottom six.
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The “excitement” factor looms large in this rehabilitation of a team, too. Already you can tell King is going to invest plenty of faith in Windsor and other classy youngsters like Harvey Langford and Xavier Lindsay.
Not just in the win over the Saints, but also in impressive practice hit-outs against Richmond and North Melbourne, you could see King’s team determined to quicken the tempo, to risk where necessary in order to create.
Melbourne’s trade-ins have been quite pointed, too. Jack Steele and Brody Mihocek are obviously very different players, but perhaps peas in a pod in terms of character, highly-regarded team men and workhorses who can make as big a difference in terms of mentoring younger faces around the club and on the training track as they can on match day.
Their arrival says implicitly that whilst Melbourne has had one of the AFL’s most-experienced playing groups, it hasn’t necessarily been one set a good enough example by its leaders. And both Steele and Mihocek can still offer plenty in their own right simply as part of the Dees’ best 23.
All of which makes Saturday night’s big clash with Fremantle in Perth even tastier than it might have been anyway.
The Dockers, of course, have this week occupied a familiar role in the narrative, having shown all the promise in the world in a blitzkrieg eight-goal first term against Geelong at the Cattery last Saturday, but then being overrun and ultimately disappointing in defeat.
This is a big game for them, but also one hard to win in terms of a point being made. Victory, at home, is nothing less than what almost every pundit (and probably even Melbourne, for that matter) would have expected just over a week ago.
The Demons, in contrast (and yes, King and co. will hate this being said), have little to lose. Even a respectable defeat won’t damage early perceptions of their new brand. And a win would really take this early-season momentum to a whole new level.
It’s going to be sunny and hot in Perth on Saturday evening, and a big, quick Optus Stadium deck might be exactly the sort of surface on which King’s new-look, zippier Melbourne can make an even bigger impression than it did last week.
No, I’m still not going to go the early crow if the Demons can pull off the upset and make it two from two. But I will start thinking pretty hard about climbing on the Melbourne bandwagon. Because it’s already looking like it’s going to be at the very least an entertaining ride.
This article first appeared at ESPN.
