9 hours ago, BLWNBA said:

I understand that this isn't a popular opinion on this forum, but 2022 and 2023 were failed seasons too. People can reel off all the 'mitigations' they want, but the fact is that two consecutive straight set exits has never occurred before in the history of the game. I think this is often undersold in the context of Goodwin's tenure, people are too happy to purely sight the ladder position as being indicative of success, rather than the end output which is a more accurate measure (IMO) in a high performance environment, particularly coming off the 2021 premiership and net result.

I personally think the cracks started to emerge during both those seasons that our style was not as strong in totality and the game had already started to move past our tactics and strategy and unfortunately, we never really adjusted or pivoted in a meaningful manner; now some of that may come down to lack of players in order to compete in the modern game, but then that also falls back on the FD. For the sake of discussion, that starts to get a little bit into the realms of chicken and egg type of stuff; a bit of a wicked problem.

I agree with most of what you've said though, particularly that this is somewhat of an uncommon scenario and that there's other metrics involved in the dismissal - I'd imagine it's been viewed in the totality of results from 2022 - current which are, at the end of the day, underwhelming at best.

I’d love a couple of ‘failed’ 16 win seasons at the moment!

3 hours ago, FearTheBeard said:

It does feel like the board made a decision based on a gut feel rather than going through a proper process.

I have been in the sack Simon camp for a long time now and I suspect this is the right decision but it has yet again been handled so poorly by the club and by the leadership players who leaked it to the media.

Simon is correct, we are a better team than the 7-14 record suggests and we have finally started to properly change the way we play. What we have done is forget how to win, we are 4-14 in games decided by less than 13 points since round 20 2023.

He is the least respected premiership coach in the history of the game and this is further proof of that. If he puts his personal issues behind me, he will probably be an excellent hire for another team with a stable off-field.

We will always be thankful for 2021. The 2023 finals series will always haunt us and ultimately that was on him.

Why would he put his personal issues behind you?

By the way what was the rest about?

2 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

I think it's pretty irrefutable that Goodwin and the board weren't on the same page about his position being under consideration. The board didn't communicate that to him and that reflects poorly on the board. If he had known it was under consideration, I think Goodwin is someone who would have said so and not used words like "no inkling".

I understand why the board came to it's decision, but I'm disappointed how they kept Goodwin in the dark that his position was under serious threat.

I have been very much in the camp of backing in Goody but have come to the conclusion that the Board have considered our on field performance over a ling enough period to make the difficult decision to move on our Premiership Coach. It seems like the Board looked at contingencies either prior to this season or early on after our poor start before monitoring the situation throughout this season and making the decision prior to the end of the season so that we could have our new Coaching team before the Trade and Draft period.

2 hours ago, jnrmac said:

I'm not your intern so you can refresh your own memory.

But we started 2025 with a last minute unforgivable loss to GWS whilst debuting 5 players and with no Steven may or kozzie . So we weren't the newbie basket case that you allude to.

We then proceeded to lose to North and Essendon in the first 5 rounds because the players were poorly coached.

Senior players like Fritsch and Petty were abysmal kicking 1 goal - between them - in the first 4 rounds.

So "Google it!"? No! That's just a copout. The burden of proof is on you. Everyone who's ever touched a Sheerin knows about our horror start. What of it? If anything the few that actually expected a brilliant year got a rude awakening.

38 minutes ago, Go Ds said:

In fairness you didn't first say "lapping". But otherwise what are you talking about? You think Ross and Goody are comparable?

Go back and read.

I dont need to explain a second time around.

If you can't understand a simple argument then thats on you.

1 hour ago, DubDee said:

I’d love a couple of ‘failed’ 16 win seasons at the moment!

That’s very ‘Melbourne’ of you.

5 hours ago, Ghostwriter said:

… because he has to! He was sacked with no heads up… zero warning. Please don’t let the commendable way he’s handling himself publicly lead you to believe that he’s not hurt and bitterly disappointed, because he is. He’s “lining himself up for his next job” because he has to, NOT because he wants to.

Of course I believe he's hurt and bitterly disappointed. No heads up or warning - I would be highly surprised if he didn't read the room after St Kilda.

2 hours ago, Go Ds said:

Indeed. Maybe some on the board expected a top four finish. But our flag odds and to some extent those 5 debutants contradict this.

Flag odds?

Well we might as well just chuck in the towel if we are basing our footy program on flag odds......

6 minutes ago, BLWNBA said:

That’s very ‘Melbourne’ of you.

Thank you sir

1 hour ago, Go Ds said:

So "Google it!"? No! That's just a copout. The burden of proof is on you. Everyone who's ever touched a Sheerin knows about our horror start. What of it? If anything the few that actually expected a brilliant year got a rude awakening.

Now you are making things up - brilliant year? No one has said that. But check out Tim Lamb above. He was very positive we would be very competitive again. Yet we lost the first 5 games including to North and Essendon......

1 hour ago, jnrmac said:

Now you are making things up - brilliant year? No one has said that. But check out Tim Lamb above. He was very positive we would be very competitive again. Yet we lost the first 5 games including to North and Essendon......

1 hour ago, jnrmac said:

Now you are making things up - brilliant year? No one has said that. But check out Tim Lamb above. He was very positive we would be very competitive again. Yet we lost the first 5 games including to North and Essendon......

Agree, how many times has North blown a team off the park after 3/4 time. Bloody embarrassing.

1 hour ago, jnrmac said:

Now you are making things up - brilliant year? No one has said that. But check out Tim Lamb above. He was very positive we would be very competitive again. Yet we lost the first 5 games including to North and Essendon......

You said "But some people here have very short memories. They talked about contending for a flag at the start of the year"

That's not the same as brilliant? Anyway Goodwin's gone. This is irrelevant now.

12 hours ago, At the break of Gawn said:

I think if you compare Carlton and Melbourne over the last couple of weeks, Carlton's board made it very clear to Voss/Wright that their presentation was going to be used as a direct input to used to decide whether or not they continue with Voss or make a change.

For Melbourne, it seems that they lacked that transparency with Goodwin and here he is thinking he's giving a standard update to the board when he was actually supposed to present why they should keep him.

Just imagine having a standard catch-up with your boss at work, and then a week later told it was actually your performance review meeting and you were completely unaware and didn't get to showcase everything you've done over the last 6 months? That's what it feels like has happened.

I'm just disappointed with the lack of transparency between the board and Goodwin and I can't work out if it was deceitful, cowardly or just plain incompetence.

At Melbourne, it’s always best to start assuming incompetence and go from there

15 hours ago, binman said:

Which by the by is a perfect example of why focusing on the coach as the cause of a lack of success condem clubs like us, the bombers and the blues to being unsuccessful.

All over the world sports teams hire and fire coaches. With various levels of success. Given that at the highest level (= $$$) these are key decisions, it's an area that has been studied to death (so much so that people seem to have pretty well stopped studying it). And overall, what those studies show is that if you have a competent coach who is good at managing and motivating people (personal relationships etc.), the key factors to achieving success are, in no particular order:

• list

• fitness and medical staff

• assistants and specialist coaches

• admin from the executive down

• list

If that's in order and your coach is OK, you'll see success (Fagan at the Lions is a good example for me, more recently Nicks at the Crows). If not, not even a good coach is going to help (or hinder) - see Clarkson and any number of half-decent coaches at Essendon or St Kilda.

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by bing181

6 hours ago, Go Ds said:

So "Google it!"? No! That's just a copout.

True to form for this poster.

I wish Simon Goodwin all the best with his new coaching role at GWS in 2026.

7 hours ago, Jaded No More said:

But he was presenting to the board regularly, so there is no doubt he knew his role was being reviewed.

For me, yes and no. The head coach would be regularly presenting to the board as part of his job/role, both formally and informally. Doesn't mean he was under review per se.

Equally, in a result-oriented field like sports, everyone is always under review, which he would know and which he acknowledged in his 360 interview.

Even a week or more down the track, still feel that the Board have gone off half-cocked here. The "fresh voice" discourse is weak and flawed, almost laughable. The litmus test for me will be what OTHER changes they make, including to themselves. Changing the coach without seeing consequential changes elsewhere is just a deck-chair-moving exercise.

I suspect (without any inside knowledge), that they were spooked by a) commercial considerations (sponsorship, membership) for which they would have had figures and feedback and b) the possibility of other clubs moving on their own coaches, leaving us to play catch-up if we were to go down this path post-season.

That b) also includes not just other coaches, but players, assistants and other FD staff - with a new coach there's not enough time for any negatives to stick, so we can sell nothing but positives: yes, we know you're a key forward who likes the ball delivered out in front, and yes the kicking into the forward line has been abysmal, but we have a new coach who's going to fix it yadda yadda.

There's also a c) here that could be part of the board's thinking: if they recognised a need for wholesale change across the FD, list and club, then it needed a circuit breaker to start the Jonedominos falling. And there's no bigger circuit breaker than sacking the head coach. Much easier to move on a Petracca, Fritsch, Jones, Green or Richardson if you've done Goodwin first.

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by bing181

42 minutes ago, bing181 said:

If that's in order and your coach is OK, you'll see success (Fagan at the Lions is a good example for me, more recently Nicks at the Crows).

Just to comment on my own post (probably not permitted in Demonand, for good reason ...), a great negative example of this is David Noble at North. From an outsider's perspective, it seems that they looked at what happened at the Lions with Fagan and tried to find a clone: David Noble had a very similar background to Fagan.

The bit they got wrong though is that Fagan is an all-round nice-guy and people-person (relationships, relationships, relationships), whereas Noble seems to have been something of the opposite. Not to mention the Queensland weather/lifestyle and the role it played in attracting the best of the best (Cameron, Neale, Daniher, Dunkley etc. etc.), plus some handy Academy picks (Hipworth, Harris Andrews).

Plus, of course, a very good off-field operation.

Agree with all those that said no one should have been surprised by the board reaching this decision. The timing is somewhat of a surprise but it isn't difficult to understand if you work backwards from when the FA/trade period starts (October 3).

Waiting until the end of the season to make the call and start the process makes it virtually impossible to have someone in the chair unless it was a promotion for Chaplin (or someone else within) and even then we'd need ot do that without properly testing the market.

The current timeline laid out sees someone start before the GF.

11 hours ago, bing181 said:

True to form for this poster.

Thanks Simon

11 hours ago, bing181 said:

Not to mention the Queensland weather/lifestyle and the role it played in attracting the best of the best (Cameron, Neale, Daniher, Dunkley etc. etc.)

"We need a new voice" is a weak, flawed and laughable concept, but the weather... that's a rich discursive vein?

I think the club didn't want to say anything negative about Goodwin publicly which is why 'fresh voice' became the staple line.

Essentially the football equivalent of "It's not you, it's me."

The ultimate professional.

Not saying that we haven't made the right choice to part ways, however I'm almost certain that down the track we will realise some of the amazing qualities we had in him that aren't here anymore.

I hope like hell we will be happy with our decision, but it is by no means a low risk one.

12 hours ago, bing181 said:

Even a week or more down the track, still feel that the Board have gone off half-cocked here. The "fresh voice" discourse is weak and flawed, almost laughable. The litmus test for me will be what OTHER changes they make, including to themselves. Changing the coach without seeing consequential changes elsewhere is just a deck-chair-moving exercise.

I suspect (without any inside knowledge), that they were spooked by a) commercial considerations (sponsorship, membership) for which they would have had figures and feedback and b) the possibility of other clubs moving on their own coaches, leaving us to play catch-up if we were to go down this path post-season.

That b) also includes not just other coaches, but players, assistants and other FD staff - with a new coach there's not enough time for any negatives to stick, so we can sell nothing but positives: yes, we know you're a key forward who likes the ball delivered out in front, and yes the kicking into the forward line has been abysmal, but we have a new coach who's going to fix it yadda yadda.

There's also a c) here that could be part of the board's thinking: if they recognised a need for wholesale change across the FD, list and club, then it needed a circuit breaker to start the Jonedominos falling. And there's no bigger circuit breaker than sacking the head coach. Much easier to move on a Petracca, Fritsch, Jones, Green or Richardson if you've done Goodwin first.

Reluctantly I think a fair degree of foresight in these comments