TEN MILES BEHIND ME (AND TEN THOUSAND MORE TO GO)

TEN MILES BEHIND ME (AND TEN THOUSAND MORE TO GO) by Whispering Jack

I read somewhere that dreams are "often simple fulfilments of wishes" that rarely work out that way in the real world. You can spend the summer months dreaming, wishing and hoping that a new season will bring improvement to your footy team, that your wishes will be fulfilled and that it will happen instantly but that means nothing when the action starts and the team is neither prepared nor able to fire any more than a few opening shots.

The task wasn't a total impossibility but it was only going to happen if all of the stars were aligned in all of the right places. Such occurrences are rare and more often than not, there will be no spontaneous attainment of success. Rather, it's a slow and tedious process and that's the way it has to be with the train wreck that has been the Melbourne Football Club of 2007 to 2009. The dream might fulfilled one day well into the future but in the meantime, the going will be tough for the Demons in 2010 as the pieces are reassembled and put together.

The good news is that there will be some rays of light in among the darkness and we saw that clearly in the opening game of the season when a hopeful Melbourne took on Hawthorn at the MCG but more of that later.

The Demons took on the Hawks in a game between the AFL's walking wounded. The hope was that they could take advantage of their opponents' injury predicament and give them a run for their money. Well, they did that but unfortunately, it lasted all of four lousy minutes before the wheels fell off.

In that frenetic opening the Demons ran hard, tackled with gusto, generally had the better of the Hawks and had the opening two scoring shots of the game - both of them behinds. Then the wheels fell off and the 2008 premiers went into attack for the first time and goaled.

Then they goaled again ... and again. While this was happening, Melbourne reverted to type and reprised everything that has been horrible during the reign of coach Dean Bailey since he took the helm two years ago in the same place and against the same opposition. Same result too!

The overuse of handball, the hesitancy, the poor decision-making, the errors (often unforced and self-inflicted) and the sheer stupidity soon took on farcical proportions and by quarter time, the game was effectively over as the Hawks had kept Melbourne goalless while ramming on six of their own to take a 36-point lead. This was extended to 56 points at half time with Mark Jamar the solitary goal kicker after the first hour's play for the season.

By then the fans had been exposed to every single component of a football supporter's nightmare. In the first quarter, Brad Miller went for a mark and took out Matthew Bate who left the field dazed and possibly bleeding (couldn't tell exactly because his hair colour makes it difficult to discern).Then Brad Green was stretchered off with what appeared to be a bad neck injury (fortunately, he came back later to kick a couple of goals). Later on, Jared Rivers left the field in pain clutching his ribs.

The season was less than two hours old but already, it was becoming the season from hell.

The pain did not stop at the main break and the deficit was increased further before Alistair Clarkson's men applied their own version of the mercy rule and collectively put their feet on the brake pedal with the result being that the teams broke exactly even in the second half.

By the end of the game, thousands of Melbourne supporters had taken the easy option of departing the MCG early and many of those who remained to witness the excruciatingly painful proceedings were baying for Bailey's blood (as you do when your young and inexperienced side hit by injury suffers a humiliating defeat in the opening round of the season). This is the coach's trial year but surely you can't judge on one game alone.

I guess that most of us simply chose to ignore Bailey's constant warnings about not expecting instant success. As late as the morning of the game, he was quoted in the Herald Sun as saying of his young team that "(you) can see they are going to get better, but it all comes with a degree of patience."

What Bailey has been telling us is that when you dream of team success then you should expect some fitful sleeping because your dreams are bound to be littered with some nightmares along the way. If you hadn't got the message about the extent of the required "degree of patience" before, then it surely must have come home during the first half of the game?

Bailey was by no means let down in the main by his youthful players. If you want to point the finger at anyone then it has to come from the more experienced members of the group. The skipper worked hard and Green was courageous but Cameron Bruce (underdone after an interrupted pre season), Aaron Davey (ditto) and Brad Miller were not up to scratch and most of the 50 to 100 game players failed to step up and some were plain aweful. Of this category, I exclude Jamar, Rivers and Matthew Warnock who all contributed with the latter doing well to keep Roughhead, the Hawks' main go to man, down to only three goals in the face of a four quarter onslaught brought about by the dominance of his team's midfield.

The problem with many of the players who let their team down is that in the heat of action these blokes cannot or will not run to save themselves. The game these days is mainly about athleticism and running. It's said that we recruit players for their athleticism as much as for their football skills and yet, when Melbourne has the ball, you can look at the ground and all you can see is stagnation. There's little or no movement at the station.

And that's where Melbourne's younger brigade comes into the picture. Firstly, they are the only ones who fulfilled some of their dreams during the course of the game. Tom Scully, Jack Trengove and James Strauss did it by making their AFL debuts on the MCG. Rookies Jordie McKenzie and Jake Spencer played a few games late last year and Jack Grimes and Jamie Bennell have had a handful of matches. These are the players who are living their dreams and are at the point in their careers where each of them will tell you, "I have ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go".

This is not to say that all of these youngsters played games you can write home about. Spencer was rarely sighted, Strauss had some good, bad and ugly moments and Bennell was patchy. Grimes started slowly but worked his way into the game as did Trengove and Scully.

For my money, the top two draft picks of 2009 were the best two Melbourne players in their debut games simply because they showed the rest of the team that they were prepared to run into the right spaces to make the play and to get the footy and, in that respect, they showed up their more experienced team mates and put them to shame.

When two debutants can inspire the making of such a statement, then despite the frustrations of days like these, the fulfilment of the dream of those next ten thousand miles will be well worth the wait.

Melbourne 0.3.3 1.6.12 4.9.34 8.13.61

Hawthorn 6.3.39 10.8.68 15.14.104 17.15.117

Goals

Melbourne Green Miller Petterd 2 Jamar McKenzie

Hawthorn Brown Roughhead 3 Hooper Moss Osborne 2 Hodge Ladson Morton Mitchell Peterson

Best

Melbourne Trengove Scully Jamar Green Warnock Frawley Grimes

Hawthorn Hodge Lewis Birchall Ladson Mitchell Gibson Roughea

Injuries

Melbourne Green (neck) Rivers (ribs)

Hawthorn Renouf (groin)

Reports Nil

Umpires McLaren, Stewart, Kamolins

Official crowd 45,615 at the MCG

Postscript: I would like to dedicate this to Carole King and James Taylor whose brilliant performance I attended last night at the Rod Laver Arena. After enduring a game like Road 1, 2010 Melbourne v Hawthorn it was a pleasure to see the creative energy that has seen them retain legendary status in their craft for over four decades. CK and JT keep racking up the miles in their thousands and Sweet Baby James was the source and the inspiration for the title. I hope to see the dream fulfilled.

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