Melbourne ponders its second loss in a row against Sydney last Saturday night at the MCG. Photo: GETTY IMAGES.
Wisdom in hindsight is a wonderful asset, particularly when it comes to AFL football, and you can bet there will be plenty applied a few months from now to Melbourne’s current situation.
The convergence of events surrounding the Demons these past couple of weeks has been manna from heaven for football’s scriptwriters.
Consecutive losses after 17 wins on the trot, a very public altercation between teammates Steven May and Jake Melksham, and the revealing of some embarrassing old texts between former and current club presidents Glen Bartlett and Kate Roffey, all make for some compelling copy about hubris and the Demons’ downfall should the defeats continue.
Will they, though? Melbourne’s dominance of the end of the 2021 season and its 10 straight wins to open 2022 don’t suggest a team which is about to collapse in a heap. Which is why there’s still plenty of bets being hedged as to what’s in store next. And to that end, there’s a couple of precedents which spring to mind.
Like Melbourne, Richmond two years ago was reigning premier (albeit with a couple of flags in three seasons under its belt) when things started to go awry off the field as well as on.
The Tigers had started the season poorly, and whilst a bit later were at least clocking up the wins again, still weren’t really at their best.
Then came some off-field “dramas”, one involving Trent Cotchin’s wife Brooke and a social media post, the other Richmond pair Sydney Stack and Callum Coleman-Jones, whose late-night escapades whilst breaking a curfew would become known, comically, as “Kebabgate”.
“Hubris” briefly became the most overworked phrase in the game as applied to Richmond.
But those “incidents” which would no doubt have been cited endlessly as key moments in the club’s downfall, had completely disappeared from the lexicon again within a couple of months, by which time the Tigers had dealt with the offenders, regained their on-field swagger, and marched away with a third premiership in four years.
If anything, they became rallying points for Richmond to get its act together, from a sometimes-disgruntled coach Damien Hardwick, to players, to those close to the playing group. That, of course, will be Melbourne’s thought process right now.
There’s some interesting precedents to consider when it comes to the Demons in a strictly on-field sense, too, including its own.
Melbourne last year won its first nine games before losing to the struggling Adelaide. That defeat was the start of a string of nine games of which the Demons won just four and drew another, before finishing like they started, with seven straight wins, including three dominant finals performances. If there is to be a slump in performance, mid-season is probably the best time for it.
What’s been pivotal to the Melbourne downturn? May’s structural importance to the Demons’ defence is well documented, and there’s no question his absence (along with some injury issues for Harrison Petty) after being concussed early against Fremantle has been telling.
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Few teams ever have restricted opponents from scoring once inside their attacking 50 as effectively as have the Demons, but those percentages have blown out over the last fortnight. But what’s been going on at the other end has been significant, too, and Ben Brown is in some ways no less a talisman than May.
The big query on Melbourne for much of last year remained its scoreboard potency. That was answered when Brown, who had struggled for a game, came back into the side in round 17 and found some form.
The Demons, until Brown’s return, averaged 84.8 points per game. In their final 10 games, that soared to 97.3, Brown’s addition to the mix of Tom McDonald, medium-sized Bayley Fritsch and small Kysaiah Pickett perhaps the straw that broke the back of opposition defences.
With Brown goalless the past three games, and McDonald out injured for the foreseeable future, it’s a struggle up forward once more for the Dees. Can they conjure enough goals from the likes of resting ruck pair Max Gawn and Luke Jackson until McDonald returns and Brown finds some form again? It’s another big “if”.
There’s another precedent concerning Melbourne’s current situation which has kept popping into my head this week, even if it’s going back a fair distance, mainly because it involves both a best and worst case scenario.
Carlton in 1995 got off to a flyer, winning its first seven games and heading the ladder. It then, seemingly out of nowhere, hit the skids for two weeks, thrashed first by Sydney, then St Kilda, and predictions of the Blues’ imminent demise were sweeping. But they wouldn’t lose another game, speaking of sweeps, winning the next 16 on end in a truly dominant season.
The following season, the Blues weren’t quite as imposing in their manner of victory, perhaps a little like Melbourne this year, yet were still getting the job done, their win-loss record 10-2 after 12 games.
The demise, though, once it began, was brutal, Carlton dropping its next two games, three of the next four, and seven of the last 12 all up, including a humiliating straight sets exit from the finals after 55 and 97-point beltings at the hands of West Coast then Brisbane. And as any Carlton fan would attest, it’s been a pretty grim couple of decades since, largely.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Melbourne is about to follow suit. The Demons, unlike that Carlton group, are still relatively young, ranked only mid-table for age, have a formula they know well and is easily followed, and are part of a club making up for a lot of lost time after nearly 60 years in the flag wilderness.
Monday’s big Queen’s Birthday clash with Collingwood is huge for them, no doubt, the pressure on in front of a big crowd and against an emerging opponent desperate for a big scalp.
A good win on Monday and Melbourne will be right back on track, the defeats, presidential squabbling and the May-Melksham fracas already distant memories. And a loss? Brace yourself for more soap operas, dramatic background music and the with titles something along the lines of the “dashing of Demon dreams”.
This article first appeared at ESPN.
