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‘The Melbourne Football Club must fold.’ ‘The Melbourne Football Club must relocate to Tasmania.’
‘The Melbourne Football Club should withdraw from the 2013 season.’
These theories and more were being bandied around social media on Saturday night after the Demons’ second humiliation in as many matches, this time at the hands of Essendon.
None of them have a remote chance of happenning, but the fact they’re even being offered up as serious solutions tells us the depths to which this shambolic club has plummeted.
It’s rare to write about the same team twice in a row for a weekly column, but right now the Demons (clearly the most ironic team nickname in the AFL) are the only story.
Last week I, and the rest of the football world, castigated the lack of effort from this sorry collection of players. We were promised a performance with more heart and desire this round.
The saddest part of all was that we actually got it for a period of time.
The stark reality laid bare for all to see is how far off the pace Melbourne is from the rest of the competition. In two matches, they have an average losing margin of 113 points, and this against 11th and 14th from last year!
God help them when they start to play the better sides.
War comparisons are always trite, but in the post-match press conference, coach Mark Neeld carried with him the haunted look of an army commander who’d let his troops into a bloody massacre, and lost them all.
Jack Grimes was interviewed in the funereal rooms and was a broken, empty shell of a man, completely bereft of any life force. What a joyless existence he must be currently leading.
Right now, based on all available evidence, it is inconceivable this team will beat GWS at the MCG in round 4. Comparisons with Fitzroy are being thrown around, and not unduly. We’re watching a professional football club rot away before our very eyes.
The recent past has been a waking nightmare. The present is pitiful. The future is bleak and grim.
So, is there a way out for this once proud football club? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t just an oncoming train? What can be done?
When searching for positives, there are some diamonds in the deep rough that is the playing list.
Nathan Jones is a proud warrior whose reputation has grown under Mark Neeld. Mitch Clark has been a revelation since crossing from Brisbane. Jack Viney reminds us of a first year Joel Selwood.
Jeremy Howe brings what flair, excitement and genuine talent he can to a list that has precious little of all three.
These four stand out like beacons among the most bland, vanilla playing group in the AFL.
The three Jacks – Grimes, Trengove and Watts – are nice guys who unfortunately play nice football. But they are obviously young men of sound character, each talented in their own way and deserve to be part of the future.
Perhaps if drafted into better cultures, and in the case of the former two had avoided injuries, they’d already been seen as bona fide guns of the competition.
While on the point, it’s easy to write off the litany of high draft pick failures as poor selections, but I’m certain the problem lies with an inability to develop these picks.
This would largely be due to a lack of leaders who know the appropriate standard and intensity on both the training track and playing field.
Sam Blease has got something to suggest he can play good football at the highest level, maybe. No doubt Jimmy Toumpas does too, but that poor kid must spend his nights wondering what sins he’s committed to deserve being drafted into such a train wreck.
James Frawley has always been a touch overrated, and was awarded a misplaced ‘futures’ All-Australian spot in 2010.
This isn’t to say he isn’t a quality footballer. He is, and can be a very good second or third tall backman with neat disposal and good decision making when confident.
Chris Dawes may do a Mitch Clark and prove his detractors wrong if he can ever get on the park, although few will be putting their house on it.
What a fall from being a premiership centre-half forward only two and a half years ago.
These dozen or so players, and maybe some hidden gems we haven’t seen any of, if there are any, should be the only footballers still at the club in 2015. You can’t cut 30 players after a season, as much as the coaching staff might like to.
Colin Sylvia is symbolic of everything wrong with this football club, and it’s hard to believe Lynden Dunn is still on the list, let alone deemed worthy of a game.
It would be easy enough to tear strips off the rest of the playing group, but there is one decision made in recent times that particularly irks.
Mark Jamar was a fine player in his time, albeit equally unworthy of his place in the same All-Australian side as Frawley, and hopefully the selectors from that year are embarrassed to see him in there when they look back.
But even worse than that was the Melbourne hierarchy offering him a three year deal midway through last year.
He’s a 29 year-old beyond improvement, losing form, and who has only twice played more than 15 matches in a season. It stands in my mind as the most mind-boggling contract extension of the century.
A new coach taking over a bottom side gets a grace period where it’s okay to subtlety push blame for any culture problems, game-plan issues and skill levels to the previous coaching panel. Phrases like ‘taking time to adjust to the game-plan’, ‘turning over the list’, and ‘not fit enough’ are common-place.
Mark Neeld can not blame Dean Bailey for the Mark Jamar decision.
He must also wear the criticism for bringing in players like Cameron Pederson and David Rodan, neither of whom could get a regular game in average teams like North Melbourne and Port Power. Both were dropped after round one.
Tom Gillies and Shannon Byrnes played a combined 17 games over the last three seasons down at Geelong, and it is worth nothing the Cats finished seventh last year, not in the very upper echelons of the ladder.
These two must be bringing the most amazing off-field leadership skills, because they haven’t shown much on it, where supporters can actually judge their impact.
Senior coaches who bring in recycled players that don’t work get sacked, pure and simple. This injection of players will be and already has been spectacular in its failure. There is no way this ends well for Neeld.
Whether he’s the right man for the job or not is still unknown, but it seems unlikely with this group of players. The situation is too far gone.
Almost from minute one, rumours of him ‘losing the players’ have plagued his tenure. That said, I’m not sure this is a bad thing, as the tail has wagged the dog for too long at his place of employment.
A Melbourne fan weeps (Photo: Michael Willson/AFL Media)
Two highly regarded football men brought in to support Neeld at the start of his contract also need to come under serious fire.
Neil Craig was a sports science guru before it was popular, widely credited with playing a huge role in Adelaide’s 1997-98 premierships.
He was also one of the most respected senior coaches in the league when at the helm of the Crows, with a playing group that loved him.
Dave Misson, second only to Dean ‘The Weapon’ Robinson as a fitness man with a profile among football fans, was an apparently integral part of successful Sydney and St Kilda’s sides that contended for premierships.
Craig was brought in as senior assistant coach and mentor. Misson fulfils the role as the Melbourne Football Club Elite Performance Manager. There’s a job description that’s equal parts hilarious and oxymoronic.
Despite the glowing credentials of these two men, based on what we’ve seen in the first two rounds, the fitness level of the Demon players is so far below the required AFL standard it’s impossible to believe.
Time after time after time after time, Port and Essendon players were roaming free across the MCG, as dinosaurs once did the earth.
At one stage on Saturday night, the Bombers won a centre break and kicked a long ball straight inside 50 where two free men had time to decide which would mark it. At another, there were four loose Dons players in their own goal-square as Stewart Crameri waltzed into an open goal.
Last week, Port regularly had two, three, four and five men free in the middle of the ground as they transitioned the ball with the greatest of ease, and we saw more of the same on Saturday night.
Can this all purely be lack of desire, focus and will power? Surely it can’t. Surely.
The Melbourne Football Club CEO Cameron Schwab has had the critics knocking his door down, and for good reason.
An association with failure is his legacy as a football administrator of many years in different environments. Surely this is no coincidence.
Yet, despite being effectively sacked two years ago, he magically remains.
Friends in high places, perhaps? For that, read Garry Lyon, Jim Stynes and Don McLardy – none of whom have been able to rid this football club of the diseased culture within.
There is no easy solution to the problems that are now so deeply entrenched in the Melbourne Football Club.
The case could be made that there’s not a single person currently involved in the club that is the right fit for their position, and you’d find two dozen better candidates throughout the league for each one.
There is not a single person who has all the answers to these problems. I doubt there’s anyone who has half of them.
But Melbourne needs an injection of fresh blood from somewhere. Someone dynamic in a way that no-one else at the club is. I doubt God himself would take on the task.