THE EXPERIMENT by Whispering Jack

[Demonland 64,810]

As long as the memory of the last six days of Paul Roos' coaching tenure with the Demons remains fresh, it overshadows his achievements of the past three years. Roos took over a club teetering on the brink, wracked with division at  many levels and took it on an upward journey from two wins before he arrived, to four, seven and ten at the end in a season that was alive until late in its penultimate round. Based on where the team came from, that is by any measure a stunning result - one for which all at Melbourne should be thankful.

History will judge the period from the perspective of where the club goes from here. Will the transfer of the mantle of the senior coach now handed over to Simon Goodwin be seamless? Will the trajectory of wins continue in an upward direction leading to finals appearances and ultimately to premiership success or will the club stay where it is now in the middle of the road?

Time will tell.

The pain and the hurt of the losses to Carlton and Geelong will abate. They might even one day come to be understood as the inevitable end point in a three year experiment involving the transformation of a broken-down, dysfunctional playing list of which few components will have survived by the time Goodwin oversees his first game of 2017 into the sleek, young and exciting new model team that he will be coaching into the future.

The Roos mantra in the year of his arrival was predominantly on defence and in those days it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As the team waded through the mire, there were similarities to the days of his immediate predecessors Mark Neeld and Neil Craig and the earlier years under Dean Bailey. It struggled to produce scores on the board and the thrashings came even though there was less disruption and better players were coming onto the playing list. The process continued into the second year with some definite signs of improvement but the wall was hit about two thirds of the way through and more thrashings ensued.

This year was different. Goodwin was at the helm for the preseason matches and, while the results of those games are generally meaningless, there was a clear change in the way the team was going about things. There was a more attacking style resulting in some strong bursts of play and higher scores. 

The season proper began with a great comeback to snatch a win against the GWS Giants - impressive now in the context of that team's top four finish to the home and away season. From there, the ride became bumpy with some inexplicable low points among the highs that persisted throughout the season. There were defeats that should never have been recorded (Essendon, St Kilda twice and later, Carlton) and victories that were uplifting - notably the groundbreaking ones against the Hawks and Port Adelaide that teased us into believing the team might even be thereabouts in September. 

The dream finish never happened and, in fact, it all came crashing down heavily and disappointingly near the Geelong end of the M1. That's what happens with experiments - they don't always produce the perfect result at the first attempt and sometimes, such results were never intended in the first place.

The thing that is clear from the final season under Paul Roos is that it was still very much one of development and, as it wore on, the experiment got interesting. 

We saw experienced players including present and past leaders of the club pushed aside and in their places, time was given to the new, younger breed of player. There were times during the season when the immediate time might have screamed out for the experience in defence of the likes of Lynden Dunn and Colin Garland but the youthful Oscar McDonald kept getting games and Sam Frost was also preferred once his stint up forward came to an end. And we saw Jayden Hunt and Josh Wagner coming into the team and James Harmes was moved to defence - they too were being prepared for the future. 

And, of course, we saw the continued blooding of the high draft picks Christian Petracca, Angus Brayshaw and Clayton Oliver - sparingly at times to cater for their youth, their endurance and their body strength. There were others like Billy Stretch and Alex Neal-Bullen and later Sam Weideman who got games while the likes of former skippers Jack Grimes and Jack Trengove had to mark time with the Casey Scorpions - as did Chris Dawes and even Cam Pedersen from time to time. 

In many instances, it seemed that the younger players had not produced the form that might have warranted selection ahead of more experienced players and perhaps a different course might have even produced one or two more wins in the short term. But that was not what I believe this season was all about - rather, it was more about giving the club its best chance to rise through the invisible ceiling between the middle of the road and the successful clubs that regularly fight it out at the end of the season. 

If Goodwin and the team can achieve that in the next year or so, then the experiment will have been a success.