The heat is on: Simon Goodwin and John Worsfold’s sides meet in a bigger-than-usual Friday night game for this time of year.
When does a merely disappointing start to a new AFL season become a fully-fledged crisis? When does a team’s promising opening to the football year translate into premiership possibilities? Not soon enough these days, if breathless headlines are your guide.
Football media has never been backward about coming forward with speculation on potential drama, be it involving players, coaches or contracts.
And so it proved again this week, as pre-season top four fancy Essendon slid to a second straight loss to supposed struggler St Kilda, Bombers coach John Worsfold allegedly already under pressure to retain his job, compounded by former star James Hird’s reported interest in giving the coaching caper another crack.
Adding a little spice was the fact Hird was already making a comeback of sorts in the radio commentary box at the Essendon-St Kilda game, the convenient juxtaposition further emboldening a few over-eager media types to have two plus two equal 28 instead of four.
Pundits have learned to be more careful when it comes to the top end of the ladder, though, the consequences of making too early a call more visible at the pointy end of the season than when it comes to the also-rans, in whom most have by then well and truly lost interest.
Look at Richmond last year, which for the entire home and away season appeared a cut above all its rivals, and finished two games clear on top of the ladder. Of course, all it took was one off night in the penultimate game of the season for the Tigers not to even reach the grand final.
So while Geelong’s two impressive wins thus far have enough critics singing their praises, it’s not yet the case for Brisbane, which has been just as impressive in knocking over defending premier West Coast, and last Sunday, coming from behind to defeat North Melbourne away from home.
The Cats, who have been a perennial finalist now for 15 years, are of course a much safer bet than the still youthful Lions, who finished only 15th last year and had won a total of just 17 games from 88 over the previous four seasons.
The clubs themselves, meanwhile, are well used to insulating themselves from the external hype, positive or negative, a favourite coaching mantra that things are never as good, or bad, as they seem.
Coaches are big on not overreacting to either victory or defeat, let alone the current state of the AFL ladder. And that’s even more so the case these days in a tight competition, any side capable of beating any other on a given day given the right circumstances.
Process is the buzzword, knee-jerk reactions the anathema. But at the same time, neither can various coaching panels go on too long maintaining a Zen-like state in the face of the football world running around like headless chooks, lest what are very real issues not dealt with properly and dismissed instead as a temporary glitch.
It’s a psychological balance two clubs in particular, Essendon and Melbourne, will have been trying to strike this week, both yet to taste a win in 2019, both having copped at least one hiding, and the bottom line for both miles below the upbeat pre-season expectations.
Their Friday night MCG clash is being billed as “must-win” for either, and while in a 23-round season round three seems a tad early to be pronouncing definitive judgements on a team’s entire year, it’s clearly become harder in recent times to recover enough after a poor start to still play a meaningful part.
Last week, we spoke of how few teams over the last decade and a bit had ended up playing finals after only two losses. The figures are even more prohibitive once three straight have been lost.
Indeed, in the past 11 seasons, 36 teams have been 0-3 after three games. Just one – Sydney, which lost the first six games two years ago – has reached the eight, and even the Swans went out in week two that September.
But Melbourne and Essendon this week could rightly reference what was going on 12 months ago, albeit for different purposes.
The Demons after a narrow loss first-up then two victories, found themselves an awkward 2-3 after five games, before rattling off six wins in a row. Perhaps for coach Simon Goodwin, that’s reasonable evidence that there’s no cause yet for panic.
Essendon, after winning its first game, also slumped to 2-3. It then lost another three straight. But while the losses kept mounting, only one was by a considerable margin, and most featured periods where the Bombers looked decent enough. You could have argued a case for Worsfold to maintain a “steady as she goes approach”.
It was the round eight defeat to previously winless Carlton which tipped things over the edge. At 2-6, Essendon was all but gone as far as finals were concerned.
Assistant coach Mark Neeld was made something of a sacrificial lamb, a game style which had caused confusion and hesitation was all but thrown out the window, and the Dons told essentially to “just play football”, an approach which saw them win 10 of their last 14 games.
What is the bigger gamble for Worsfold now? Waiting to see if things eventually click? Or again performing some radical surgery in an attempt to nip things in the bud before another season is thrown away? Either approach has its risks.
Many coaches now talk about how difficult it is to get a handle on just how good (or poor) their sides are until everyone has played everyone else. But that is a luxury current fixturing doesn’t allow, some opponents played twice before other rivals might have met even once. And increasingly, in terms of negotiating a six-month roster of games, it’s the early birds catching the worms.
The stakes are indeed high, and on Friday night, Worsfold and his opposite number Goodwin probably wouldn’t mind being in the media boxes instead.
There, the consequences of pronouncing a team’s season dead or alive only to be subsequently proven wrong aren’t nearly as grave, likely to be well and truly forgotten come September.
Not so in the coach’s box. Should Friday’s result indicate either the Essendon or Melbourne mentor ended up making the wrong call on how they approached this week, about the one thing you can guarantee is that it won’t be forgotten. Or forgiven.
*This article first appeared at INKL.
