THE WEEK AFTER THE GLORY

by Whispering Jack

A long time ago, I used to live next door to an old St. Kilda supporter who once acquainted me with the legend of the crest on his team's guernsey. During the depression years, wins were few and far between for the Saints. There was little to cheer about if you happened to be an avid fan of the red, white and black. Then one day they were playing against North Melbourne and things were looking decidedly bleak. One by one, the players came off with injury and in the end, the team was down to only 16 fit men who fought courageously to record a memorable victory. The supporters celebrated wildly for days on end and the committee decided to add a black cross emblem to signify the courage of the players - a sort of tribute to the momentous achievement of winning this one single game of football.

I wondered when I heard the story why such a big deal had been made by the club for a single day's achievement. Surely, you would expect the members of your team to display courage every time they ran onto the ground? I thought perhaps that the answer might be that St. Kilda had never tasted the ultimate in success in the sport or perhaps it was the other way around - that St. Kilda was always focused on what little it had achieved in its history and simply didn't have the right mindset to focus on achieving the ultimate in the sport. At the time when the story was told, there were teams around like Melbourne and Collingwood which expected that sort of effort from their players every week of the season - and that's why they were winners and the Saints were losers.

While competitive football at the elite level is about a lot of things, surely the ultimate has to be the winning of the whole competition - to finish top dog, not just to be there for one week or for one month but to come out on top at the very end. Ask any footballer what their ultimate aim is and they'll tell you that it's not for the money or for the moments of individual glory or anything else but to hold the premiership cup aloft at the end of the season. And it's the strong and successful clubs that demand heroics every time their teams grace the field. This is a given thing when your aim is the winning of the flag.

The story of the St. Kilda crest and it's day of glory came back to me when the compliments started rolling in for the Demons after their Anzac Round heroics against Sydney. I have no objection to heaping praise on the team for its courage under fire but let's not get too carried away with the handing out of kudos. Praise is one thing but why should we be so effusive in handing out bouquets to a team that has had such an under whelming start to the season? Are we satisfied with one win in the opening four rounds including a miserable defeat to start proceedings at the hands of last year's wooden spooners?

Malcolm Blight famously said after Geelong, the team he was coaching, was well beaten in the opening round of the 1994 season (by Melbourne) that a football season is not a sprint, but a marathon. Unfortunately, by losing the opening three games of 2006, the Demons lagged well below the lead pack early in their marathon run. Some Melbourne supporters were already talking in terms of a best case scenario in which their team barely scraped into the final eight as if they have given up the ghost as far as the top four is concerned. To them I say that the minute you take your eyes of the main goal then you're half way to defeat and failure.

For the first 22 rounds of the season the way to achieve the main goal comes through finishing in the top four, not just the top eight as Melbourne has done in each of the last two years. To achieve that, you still have to be in positive territory as far as your win/loss ratio is concerned. To make top four, you probably need 14 wins, possibly fifteen.

Q: So where does Melbourne stand after its glorious victory in Sydney last weekend?

A: With just a single win or a 25% success rate and a lousy percentage to boot!

In order to get into positive territory, the Demons therefore have to win their next three games and win them well. To remain there, they have to win all of the next four. Thankfully, those four games are all going to be played on home territory - the magnificent new look MCG - against the Kangaroos, Geelong, Fremantle and Hawthorn. Perhaps when the players have worked hard enough to achieve courageous wins in all four will I start thinking about handing out some light praise for their efforts.

You see, I don't want my club to end up like the St. Kilda of old which was satisfied to merely enjoy the odd scraps that occasional victories can bring without tasting the golden nectar that only come from drinking out of a premiership cup.

And that brings us to the rest of the season, which starts with Melbourne's first true home game for 2006 against the Kangaroos. As mentioned above, this is the first of four consecutive games at the home of football and provides the club with the perfect launching pad to recover ownership of this magnificent stadium we call our home. The 'Roos are in a trough and looking at the vision of them at training under Dean Laidley during the week and the body language wasn't all that flash. Melbourne will not want to take them lightly and despite their injury worries, the Demons have the depth and, on recent form, they also seem to have the opposition's measure. The inclusion of the in form pair of Holland and Bate along with Jamar and Moloney will add a touch of much needed freshness to the side.

I'm hoping that the players won't be satisfied with their one week of glory under the Sydney sun and that they do exactly what is needed in the vital week after the glory - to win and win well. I'm tipping a margin of 55 points.

MELBOURNE v KANGAROOS

Where and when: MCG 2:10pm (AEST), Saturday 29 April 2006

TV & Radio: Channel 10 (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth), Fox Footy (Adelaide), Triple M (Melbourne), ABC, 3AW

Head to Head: Melbourne 59 Kangaroos 81 Drawn 1

Last Time They Met - Melbourne 17.14.116 d Kangaroos 11.14.80 Manuka Oval, Round 11, 2005.

MELBOURNE

B Miller Carroll Whelan

HB Yze Rivers Brown

C Green Bruce Sylvia

HF Bate Robertson Davey

F McDonald Holland Pickett

Foll White Godfrey Johnstone

I/C Bartram Jamar Moloney Wheatley

Emergencies C Johnson Read Ward

In Bate Jamar Holland Moloney

Out P Johnson (shoulder) McLean (adductor) Neitz (hip flexor) Warnock

New Matthew Bate (Eastern Ranges)

KANGAROOS

B Archer, Hay Pratt

HB Brown, Perry Firrito

C Sinclair, Harris B Rawlings

HF Grant, Petrie Green

F Co Jones Thompson Harding

Foll Hale Harvey Simpson

I/C Rocca Sansbury Wells Makepeace

Emergencies LeCras Swallow Watt

In Archer

Out Trotter