The Harrison Petty experiment up forward has not worked for Melbourne so far in season 2024. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES.
Make no mistake about it, Melbourne is neck deep in this year’s premiership race.
The Demons might be a little bit forgotten about at the moment with fellow top-four sides Geelong, Sydney and GWS, as well as Carlton, attracting most of the attention, but they are right in the mix for a second flag in four years.
When your team possesses a once-in-a-generation core of players consisting of captain Max Gawn, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca, Steven May and Jack Viney, by default you’re a contender.
And that’s even with a former member of that group Angus Brayshaw retiring on the eve of the season.
But there is still one thing that is holding back Melbourne from being an outright frontrunner this season.
Did you notice something about the aforementioned collection of stars that appeared out of whack?
There’s a ruckman, three midfielders and a defender. That’s two lines of the ground covered. Well, what about the forward line?
What about the forward line, indeed.
It’s 2024, and Melbourne’s attacking zone remains its most unsettled and, therefore, weakest link.
And that’s even after taking into account their pretty decent goalkicking which has seen them go at better than 50 per cent conversion rate in four of their first seven matches – something they memorably failed to do in both of their two finals last year on the way to a second consecutive straight-sets exit from September.
While they’re at a respectable equal seventh in the league for accuracy, they are smack bang in the middle in the points-for column (ninth).
And one can’t help but wonder if, already a third of the way through the season, the fact that the Demons are still chopping and changing their forward line mix might have something to do with it.
After losing late-season attacking surprise packets from 2023 in Jake Melksham (ACL) and Joel Smith (suspension), Melbourne was forced to go back to the drawing board for the start of this season.
Would they once again call upon defender-cum-forward Tom McDonald, who kicked 33 goals in their premiership year and 53 in their run to the 2018 preliminary final, after two injury-ravaged seasons?
Nope. He was sent back to his natural habitat in the backline, and, in fairness, it has worked pretty well so far.
Instead, they opted to go back to the well with Ben Brown, who only managed seven games in 2023, and Harrison Petty who looked like the answer to Melbourne’s woes in Round 20 last year when he kicked a career-high six goals against Richmond – only to suffer a season-ending ankle injury the next week.
Brown’s return started well enough this year with a couple of goals against the Bulldogs and a crucial three-goal performance a few weeks later in Melbourne’s gutsy win over fellow top-four contender Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval.
But with only one goal and nine touches to his name over the next two matches, Brown found himself back out of the side.
You couldn’t blame coach Simon Goodwin for backing in Petty to become a key cog of the forward line after what he produced late last year. For all we know, his untimely injury might have got in the way of something significant for the Demons during the finals.
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But after five games and just one goal in 2024, Petty is looking like a bit of a one-hit wonder in attack, and certainly nowhere near a successful swing man story as McDonald was when he made the switch from defence to the forward line.
Things got so desperate for the Demons last round that they had to rely upon a three-gamer who had never played in the forward line at senior level and was yet to kick an AFL goal.
Luckily for Melbourne, the gamble paid off because Daniel Turner was outstanding against Richmond with three goals.
We’re heading into Round 8 and, again, the Demons’ forward line is becoming a crapshoot with the constant experimentation and tinkering.
And of the other forwards that the they have backed in so far, Jacob van Rooyen doesn’t impose himself on a contest nearly enough for a guy that plays his position, Kade Chandler has been a bit hit-and-miss after a breakout season last year and while recruit Jack Billings gets his fair share of the ball, two goals to this point of the season is not a pass mark.
But Goodwin was keen to put a positive spin on it after their seven-goal win over Richmond last week.
“We think we’ve got a lot of guys that can play forward of the ball,” Goodwin he said.
“We’re just open-minded to what it looks like. We think we’ve got a lot of depth starting to build in that part of the ground and we’ll keep forging ahead to try and find the best mix and the best team in that area of the ground.”
However, it’s awfully similar language to what Goodwin was using last year when trying to crowbar now departed Brodie Grundy into the forward line.
“We’re really open-minded,” Goodwin said of Grundy heading into Round 20.
“We have given him some forward exposure last week at VFL level which we are really encouraged about.”
Well, the Grundy experiment clearly didn’t work and, after giving the former Magpie a brief crack at it in Round 22, the Demons were still trying to figure out what their best forward set-up was on the eve of the finals (albeit, the injury to Melksham didn’t help).
They simply cannot afford to leave it that late again this season. The best teams in the finals are the most settled teams who develop familiarity and an almost innate understanding of where they can expect their teammates to be on the park. Dependability and monotony are the keys to success.
No doubt the injection of off-season recruit Shane McAdam and the return of injured Charlie Spargo will give Goodwin another couple of exciting options which could make the forward line more dynamic and dangerous in the coming weeks.
But, ideally, Goodwin would want to settle on a forward line combination in the early stages of the second half of the season and give it a lengthy lead-in to the finals to familiarise themselves with each other. Otherwise, another premiership cup might go begging, and this era which promised so much runs the risk of becoming unexceptional.
