Footy Repair: The Dees are as busted as Petracca’s ribs – it’s time for Simon Goodwin to search out Plan B

Melbourne’s loss to Fremantle final week stands alone because the Demons’ worst loss since their time as premiership contenders started in 2021.

By comparability, their 38-point defeat by the hands of Collingwood on King’s Birthday wasn’t wherever close to as unhealthy – however in case you bleed purple and blue, there’s each probability this one was much more disheartening.

This was a loss so deflating, so irritating, so completely indicative of every part going incorrect with the Dees for the time being and every part that was already incorrect with them even after they had been correctly good, that it’d as nicely have signalled to the remainder of the AFL that Melbourne is over.

tenth on the ladder, having sat within the high 4 only a month in the past, the Dees face an almighty battle to a lot as make finals, by no means thoughts win one for the primary time for the reason that 2021 grand closing. And the best way they’re taking part in, this doesn’t strike as a workforce up for that problem, or one able to going through it even when they had been.

This was a match that the Demons merely needed to win heading in – not simply to redeem themselves from their Alice Springs obliteration, but in addition just because a Magpies workforce with no rating of their finest gamers, in comparison with simply Jake Lever and, in case you’re being actually beneficiant, Jake Melksham, was about as susceptible as a reigning premier ever will get.

So how did they reply? By kicking abysmally for objective, as per common. By spurning probability after probability to make one thing of their inside 50s, as per common. By getting ripped aside by speedy ball motion from a midfield far much less spectacular on paper however boasting leg velocity away from the competition that the likes of Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney simply can’t match. As per common.

The Dees’ goalkicking was the most important missed alternative in footy on a day when Tom Morris’ X account was hacked just for the hacker to be a homophobe as a substitute of posting one thing truly humorous.

It could be straightforward to argue that that inaccuracy made them unfortunate to lose by as a lot as they did, ending with simply three fewer inside 50s and with extra photographs – and simply two factors behind on the anticipated scores metric, too.

However when that is the norm for the final 18 months then it turns into a cop-out to recommend it was pricey right here: the Dees as a rule kick terribly in a means that that metric doesn’t take note of, and the overall consensus out of their sprayed set photographs and wild snaps within the first quarter particularly was that it was classic Melbourne.

On high of that, even the strengths are starting to fade: Lever’s absence just isn’t supreme, however the Dees’ miserly rocks behind the ball would have been capable of cowl for him in 2021 or 2022.

Now, the Dees are leaking like a sieve, particularly at floor degree. It’s unimaginable how shortly a seemingly watertight construction when the ball is in mid-air crumbles when the footy hits the turf, how shortly the likes of Trent Rivers, Blake Howes and Jake Bowey look out of their depth in opposition to even probably the most inexperienced smalls if Steven Might can’t pull down an intercept mark and save their bacon.

The above video is simply probably the most egregious instance out of King’s Birthday: the sight of a number of Demons flying for a similar ball, spoiling each other, and leaving Pies all over the place free at floor degree was a farcically widespread one.

Simply as embarrassing had been the identification of the goal-scorers: for the second week in a row, it wasn’t as if the Dees had been getting a rating kicked on them by Charlie Curnow or Jake Waterman or Charlie Cameron.

Harvey Harrison, a effective growing teenager who has eight objectives in ten profession video games, bagged three opportunist majors feasting on the bottom balls the Dees made a hash of neutralising. Aerially, Nathan Kreuger, finest identified for having didn’t run out about three-quarters of his profession AFL video games, dobbed three, sufficient of them against Might to be correctly alarming. And Will Hoskin-Elliott, coming back from damage and thrown deep ahead away from his 2024 position up the bottom as a result of actually who the hell else did Craig McRae need to play there, managed two to bookend the primary half.

That trio made the Dees’ long-held justification for his or her ahead line woes attributable to lack of high quality choices look all of the extra hole: in Jacob van Rooyen, Kysaiah Pickett and Bayley Fritsch, probably the most gifted three forwards on the sphere had been sporting purple and blue.

The latter two, although, had been liable for the majority of the errant kicking, with Fritsch all however invisible till the final quarter and wayward when he lastly rocked up.

Van Rooyen was a shining gentle and had in all probability his finest recreation as he recurrently bought out the again of the Magpies’ defence, and attempting one thing comparable within the weeks to come back quite than reverting to bombing lengthy aimless balls his means and anticipating him to do one thing past his years is the best way to go.

In midfield, Clayton Oliver is trying correctly washed: for all his efforts to affect the competition after Christian Petracca’s damage, he’s removed from the clearance-winning brute he was even 12 months in the past. Instantly against him at many a stoppage, Jack Crisp gained the Neale Daniher Trophy by persistently outrunning and outhunting him, exhibiting off velocity and penetration, with 579 metres gained, Oliver merely couldn’t match.

By full time, the Pies lead the clearance rely by 10 and the centre clearances by eight – an outstanding quantity for a Scott Pendlebury, Jordan De Goey-less on ball brigade in opposition to Viney and Oliver, even with Petracca out with that nasty rib damage.

In transition, leg velocity as an entire is a major concern for the Dees.

The Pies ripped them to items on turnover as a result of man to man they weren’t fast sufficient to run down the pacy Collingwood runners up the bottom, whereas forward of the ball their defensive construction was far too sluggish to get in place with the ball coming at them as maniacally because it did.

Damningly, all that occurred regardless of the Dees’ second win of the day, alongside van Rooyen: Alex Neal-Bullen’s very good tagging job on Nick Daicos, decreasing the Pies’ finest participant to fifteen disposals, practically all of them on the within at stoppages, and hardly any affect in any respect on open play.

{That a} tag of this type is a rarity for Goodwin’s Demons sort of sums up my level: it’s time for Melbourne to strive one thing new earlier than it’s too late and a workforce nonetheless excessive on expertise topples utterly off the sting, which it’s going to if the good Max Gawn, once more comfortably the Dees’ finest, reaches the cliff.

Possibly meaning spinning the magnets: put Pickett in as a everlasting beginning on-baller with directions to do as Izak Rankine has finished for Adelaide and fear solely about being an attacking drive. Or possibly do this with Kade Chandler, whose underrated hardness and cleanliness with ball in hand may see him be a Sam Durham-type across the footy. Christian Salem, too, can be an actual asset as a everlasting on-baller, or possibly in a Harry Sheezel-like forward-mid position as a substitute of at half-back, together with his lovely abilities and rangy, loping tempo.

In assault, there is sufficient to work with in van Rooyen and co. that the Dees mustered a greater than respectable 13 marks inside 50, yet one more than the Magpies: however going inside 50, possibly it’s time to be braver and kick in the direction of the central hall quite than honouring results in the pockets, the place set shot kicking is harder – except in fact you’re Darcy Cameron.

Transferring the ball faster would additionally go away the 50 much less clogged up, which is an enormous purpose why the Pies had been extremely correct on the counterattack and with their snaps. Pickett being across the ball on a everlasting foundation will surely assist obtain that.

Then, in case you’re actually determined, why not strive Might as a ahead? Sure, it smacks of desperation and can be actually left-field, however for the time being Harrison Petty is trying whole out of his depth as a tall marking possibility, on the reverse finish of the bottom to the place he made his title as a promising younger key again.

Might is 32, and much nearer to the top than the start: the way forward for the Dees’ defence is Petty and to a lesser extent Lever. I’m undecided what the purpose is of taking part in Tom McDonald as a key defender forward of him, given Kreuger was nonetheless capable of lower by means of for 3 objectives and Petty’s contributions in assault have at instances been painful.

Possibly the reply is extra to do with construction: arrange the midfield for faster spreads from the competition, which might imply having Ed Langdon and Caleb Windsor pushing proper up at stoppages quite than completely holding their width. Or to prioritise overlap run popping out of half-back quite than protected, stodgy ball motion to clear the hazard space however do little to assault except a obtrusive gap opens up.

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The Demons of 2024 have made adjustments, however they’ve been minimal: that is nonetheless a defence-first workforce, nonetheless a workforce whose midfield focus is on profitable the exhausting ball over getting it to the skin, nonetheless a workforce that has no thought what its ahead line ought to appear to be and how one can finest use the expertise it has.

If nothing adjustments, the Dees will nonetheless beat the great sides, nonetheless be woefully proven up by the higher ones, and in the event that they do scrape into September they’ll in all probability lose once more even when they’re the higher facet on the evening.

Throwing the whiteboard within the bin and beginning once more from scratch is the last-ditch transfer of the actually determined: but when the prospect of a season, and a premiership window, gurgling down the drain doesn’t make Goodwin determined sufficient, then what on earth would?

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