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If you asked me to sum up Melbourne’s win over Carlton on Friday night with an Inbetweeners quote, I’d have to go with this one.
This was not a great game of footy. This was not a good game of footy. Worst of all, this wasn’t even a ‘so bad it’s hilarious’ game where players missed set shots from 15 metres out or tripped over their own feet trying to switch.
This was a bad game in the way most bad games are these days: two sides with more than enough of the ball to shred an opponent playing dreadfully, but wretched by foot and mind when at crucial junctures. Some of these nights you can blame on frenetic pressure, or ghastly conditions. Neither were a factor at the MCG.
I’ve been slower to turn against Carlton than more sensible people this year, but you couldn’t seriously deny how poorly they are going anymore. Utterly smashed in close by a Demons on-ball brigade missing Clayton Oliver – for a midfield still stacked with Sam Walsh, Patrick Cripps and Adam Cerra plus others despite their recent injury run, that’s almost inexcusable – the Blues were never going to be efficient enough with the limited chances they had to be a realistic threat.
Sure enough, they’d regularly rally to reduce the margin to under two goals, but never really look like winning: a set shot miss here, or a butchered turnover there, would always crop up to dash their charge and leave another wave of supporters seriously considering Richmonding their memberships.
44 is the Blues’ lowest score under Michael Voss, and for it to come despite Harry McKay having himself an evening reminiscent of his 2021 Coleman Medal year, clunking marks and roosting goals from outside 50 before the yips returned badly in the second half, is a massive problem.
Yes, Melbourne’s backline is famously miserly, but good sides haven’t had much of an issue kicking a winning score on them of late, and if Fremantle can do it with Jye Amiss and Josh Treacy as their key targets, then a McKay and Charlie Curnow-led attack has no excuses.
But really, it’s boring to analyse why the Blues are bad at this point. The reasons are obvious, they’re multi-faceted, and while mathematically their season isn’t shot, the squad sure seems like it is. A fifth loss in a row will attract more headlines, but all this latest defeat does is confirm what most of us already knew.
The real thinking man’s story of the evening is how poor the Demons are going. Off the back of consecutive losses, with a devilishly tough fixture coming up, more performances as horrendous as Friday night’s won’t just mean an end to their premiership aspirations: even their top-eight chances will start to look shaky.
Let’s start with the bigger picture: the Dees had 20 more inside 50s (59-39), won the clearances by nine (38-29) and dominated contested possessions by 26 (148-122). They also had 40 forward half intercepts – the most by any team this year – to 16, and 58 disposals inside 50 to 29.
This is the stat line of a 100-point win – 70 if you kick badly for goal. For it to only be enough for a 17-point win over everyone’s favourite whipping team is an utter horror show.
Out of all that, the Dees managed just the one goal from a forward half intercept. 1.5, to be specific – so yes, the kicking for goal was an issue. But it’s also notable to point out that it wasn’t like the misses were coming from directly in front, or from 15 metres out: a significant number of shots came from the pockets, often 30-50 metres out, where even the most accurate sharpshooters don’t kick truly every time.
Which is where the Dees’ old problem comes into play. I wrote in August last year – as it happens, after a game also against Carlton – that their forwards just weren’t leading for the ball.
So often, midfielders bursting through the corridor were kicking long and high with forwards running back towards goal rather than presenting at the carrier, making scoring far tougher than it really had any right to.
Well… it’s back. And here are the four most glaring examples of how it’s crippling the team I had winning the flag at the start of the year.
It started within the first ten minutes: as Bayley Fritsch runs the ball down the wing and towards attacking 50, looking for someone to pass to, Joel Smith is the Dees’ deepest forward, the obvious choice to kick to.
His plan, though, is to run backwards towards goal, crying out for the usual kick: a high, hopeful ball that will surely give Jacob Weitering (just in front of Smith) time to get back and spoil, as well as the Blue out of screen to Smith’s left (I think Lewis Young?) a chance to get a fist to the ball.
There are so many avenues for Smith to do something more creative here. He could lead sharply to the pocket, where Weitering almost certainly won’t be able to cover in time if the kick is good (and Fritsch should be hitting a kick as easy as that under no pressure). Or he could make a beeline for the obvious leading lane right in front of him, between Weitering and Sam Docherty; Fritsch’s kick would need to be a beauty, landing in a perfect spot and over Adam Saad just in front of him, but only a few moments later he’d pull off a kick to that exact spot.
As it happens, Smith not doing either of those things doesn’t matter: Fritsch pinpoints Christian Petracca (just in frame to the left of screen) with a sizzling inboard kick, and the Trac goes back and kicks the goal. All’s well that ends well… but it’s a notable rarity for the rest of the match.
The next glaring example comes in the second quarter: at half time, Garry Lyon tore into Angus Brayshaw for the below kick, which found its way perfectly onto the chest of Young in between three or four Dees.
Realistically, though, what was Brayshaw meant to do here? There are six Demons on that side of the ground: two, Max Gawn and Christian Petracca, aren’t calling for it. Kysaiah Pickett, the furthest back, is inexplicably calling for it despite being far too far away, and guess what he wants? Yep, a ball kicked out the back.
Most concerning of all here is Jacob van Rooyen and Jack Viney. I like van Rooyen a lot, and think he’ll be a superstar, but he does the same thing as Smith does: he backs back, and calls for the ball to basically be sat on top of his head. Sure, he’s capable of marking that, but it’s such a low-percentage play.
That both Smith and van Rooyen are doing basically the same thing suggests to me that it’s a coaching thing, that the instruction is for them to play this way from Simon Goodwin and Demons forwards coach Greg Stafford. I’m baffled as to why.
Viney’s positioning, too, is a major issue: he’s not calling for the ball, and worse, he’s clogging up van Rooyen’s leading lane. You never see this with, say, Collingwood, and a big part of Port Adelaide’s surge this year has been down to efficiency moving forward. Viney has a whole 20 metres of space around him, but there’s no movement from him, no expectation that Brayshaw might be looking for a target.
I hate what Fritsch is doing just as much; he should be leading at the ball, at best for a link-up pass from Brayshaw, and at worst forcing the Blue nearest to him – Patrick Cripps – to defend him and taking him out of dangerous space inside 50. Instead, he too is calling for the ball while backtracking inside 50.
Brayshaw would need to not only perfectly lace out a target moving away from him, but do so with a kicking speed that would rival a fighter jet to get it to Fritsch before Weitering, next to Pickett in the frame, can get there to spoil.
This is so glaringly a cohesion problem, and it’s been an issue with the Dees pretty much since the 2021 grand final. When you see stuff like this, not only do you have more sympathy for the poor mids copping flak for turning the ball over, but also wonder how in God’s name they are comfortably the year’s highest-scoring side.
We’ll get to why in a bit (spoiler: it’s because they’ve filled their boots against the weakies and are bizarrely good at scoring from the back half), but if the Dees think they can take this sort of behaviour from their forwards into their King’s Birthday clash with Collingwood, they’d better get ready for Darcy Moore to take infinite intercept marks.
This, incidentally, is how the Magpies attack their 50 when at their best.
To be sure, a few Magpies forwards are streaming towards goal, but the one hit up by Will Hoskin-Elliott is Brody Mihocek. COMING AT THE FOOTY. Weitering, trailing behind, never had a chance.
I went in to half time convinced all the Dees’ problems could be solved if their forwards just collectively started to actually do the thing that forwards are paid to do, and lead up. But then this happened.
Midway through the third quarter, Christian Salem grabbed the ball on defensive side of the centre circle, sped off, took two bounces, and advanced with breathtaking style to the 50m arc. A goal beckoned.
Salem, a beautiful kick, is the Demon most fans would want delivering that final ball inside 50 more than anyone, and his injury-affected 2022 and absence to start 2023 has been a big part of their patchy form. Surely he would hit someone up.
So when he took far too long to make a decision and found himself face to face with the onrushing Mitch McGovern, needing to quickly scrub a kick forward to avoid getting caught with the ball, I assumed it was because every Demon was doing the thing again.
Then the camera angle opened up (incidentally, I’ve never been more annoyed by Seven’s obsession with close angles than I was on Friday night). And this is what I saw (Salem’s the one on the ground at the 50 if that wasn’t clear).
Unless I’m very much mistaken – and it’s hard to tell for sure given, y’know, Seven’s camerawork gives a limited view of the game – that right there is Bayley Fritsch leading up for the ball, right up the middle of the 50, Lewis Young trailing in his wake.
Yes, further right, I’m pretty sure that’s Kozzie Pickett cribbing back towards goal as he usually does, while I’m not exactly sure why Charlie Spargo, with an open 50, has found himself out as wide as he has except that he’s trying to be a decoy. But none of that really matters: Fritsch has a clear leading lane, is miles clear, and is doing the right thing.
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I honestly cannot work out why Salem didn’t choose to pass. I can’t believe that one of the Demons’ best decision-makers didn’t see him, as wide open as he was, so I can only assume that he just expected every Dees forward to be running back towards goal and figured it would create an open passage to run to 40 and kick the goal himself. McGovern soon disabused him of that notion.
There’s one more example, and this is the most egregious of all. Midway through the last quarter, Fritsch takes a ripper mark between half-forward and the wing. With the momentum from the mark carrying him goal side of Blake Acres, the Dees have an overlap, and a golden chance at a crucial goal if they’re good enough.
Fritsch is circled in the picture below, with the ball in mid-flight from his kick.
There are two things wrong with this play. First: Kozzie. I’ve hinted at him in the last couple of images, but here’s where it becomes a trend: for everything good about his game, he cheats. A lot.
He’s like Charlie Cameron in that he’s so often seen running back towards goals, except the Lions have built a game plan specifically around Charlie and his fellow forwards dragging their opponents up the ground, leaving space behind, and then Cameron beating them back with pace. The Dees don’t play like that.
Pickett just needs to be leading up at this ball. It’s classic forward craft: dash back hard, feint, and then head back at the ball-carrier. Nick Riewoldt became an all-time champion of the game doing mostly that (plus quite a lot of other stuff that was pretty good as well).
Pickett isn’t the only problem, though; Fritsch, for all his good intentions, plays on and then kicks before his forwards are ready for it. Even if Pickett was the type of player to lead up at the ball, he gave him no time to do it before the ball was heading his way.
If he holds the ball one, two, three seconds more, and waits for the optimum moment, Pickett has a free 50 to lead back up into, and a simple pass beckons. Again, this is a cohesion problem, and it’s bigger and more complex than just the forwards learning to hit up at the ball a bit more.
The Dees have too much talent to be in too much danger of missing finals. They won this game because Christian Petracca had one of his more outrageous games with 32 disposals, eight clearances, nine intercepts, a goal and nine score involvements.
They won this game because Max Gawn flushed a set shot from outside 50 when they needed it.
They won this game because Steven May blanketed Charlie Curnow and the Blues kept kicking it to Jake Lever.
There is so much talent on Melbourne’s list, and against lesser teams like this Carlton outfit, or North Melbourne, or Hawthorn, or West Coast, or teams of that ilk, it’ll be enough most of the time. When they want to, their ball movement is electric from half-back, and the worse the opposition the less likely they’ll be able to stop a possession chain with an intercept mark or timely spoil.
But this is a team we thought in September 2021 was on the verge of a dynasty. Richmond didn’t have half the talent on their list the Demons do now, and they won three flags.
Right now, Melbourne are good to ordinary – hell, they’re flat-track bullies. With the Magpies, Geelong, St Kilda, Brisbane and Adelaide coming up in the next seven weeks, they won’t be getting away with it for much longer.
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