PANTSED

by Bananabender

It was not for the first time this year that the Demons turned up for a game of football unprepared. A little under thirty minutes into their "home" match they were scoreless, trailed the 13th placed Brisbane Lions by 41 points and had been well and truly pantsed for at least the second time in the day.

The first "pantsing" came when the team arrived in Brisbane and it was discovered that the property steward had mistakenly packed a set of white away shorts for the game. Given that this was only the seventh year in a row that Melbourne had "sold out" a "home" match to play at the Gabba, you would have thought the organization could have gotten such a simple task as choice of attire right?

I travelled from Far North Queensland with two other Demon supporters, departing in the early hours of Friday the Thirteenth and arriving only hours before the game. Despite the fact that we're all a bunch of uncouth slobs, we managed to pack our supplies almost perfectly. We had the ciggies in the glove box, the tinnies packed in the esky sitting down back in the station wagon and the only thing any one of us forgot was Moose's toothbrush and that's more or less superfluous anyway on account of him not being used to regular brushing and the fact that he lacks quite a few teeth anyway. At least he remembered to bring his only pair of matching thongs for the journey!

But for a so-called professional football club to come out in that fashion is an unforgivable lapse. If the people running the team are confused, then what can you expect from the players?

Don’t try to answer that question. It's rhetorical!

In any event, we got exactly the confusion we should expect after that in the form of the second "pantsing".

This came in the manner in which the team was so completely outplayed in every facet of the game that the fat lady sitting in the row in front of me began warbling well before the siren mercifully ended the first quarter. At the time when she started limbering up her vocal chords, the Demons had still not troubled the scorer while the Lions had put six goals five behinds on the board thanks to four from Jonathan Brown who out muscled an embarrassed Brad Miller to the tune of four goals.

That wasn't entirely Miller's fault because the Brisbane midfield was pretty much dominant and, if the on ballers didn't push the ball forward with immediacy, then their defence was in total control so it didn't matter very much; the Demons were simply swamped. By some miracle however, they managed to finally get the ball to another Brown (Nathan) for a goal late in the first term. Hallelujah!

I mustn't be too harsh on the Demons. They did have a young side on the park and a coach who was in control of a team at this level for only the second time up against a wily veteran who has been doing his thing for two decades and four premiership flags. Before that, he was a champion player for a long time - possibly the best of them all. In the event, Melbourne's lack of winning experience and its overall lack of preparation showed out on the night.

Riley certainly can't be held responsible for the team's horrendous injury list or the way the team has been prepared this year. It's been well publicised that the Demons went through a pre season that saw most of the players lose weight and reduce their skinfolds in order to bring out the athleticism required to play the game. I have to believe on what I saw that the experiment was ill founded. The theory appears to overlook the fact that, despite the efforts of the rules committee, the game still requires an element of muscle and physicality that simply isn't evident among most of the Melbourne players. If Brad Miller is supposed to be a key position player, then he'll inevitably come up against a brute like Jonathan Brown at some stage. His pre season training certainly hasn't equipped him for that task. Nor did that training add any pace to the side because the Demons were generally outrun for most of the night. And then you have to question why there are so many players out with soft tissue injuries.

There are some areas however, that the coach is responsible for and I question his slow reaction time to Brisbane's initial onslaught. Melbourne has been slow to start most of the year (recent examples are the Richmond and Essendon games) but I didn't see much of an effort to close up the game until we were into the second quarter. And the space in front of the leading Brown was more or less open for most of the evening.

Then there was the poor discipline on the field with Aaron Davey, Colin Sylvia and youngster Michael Newton all losing their cool at times. Such things are unacceptable and Riley needs to deal with them before things really get out of hand.

Perhaps the most obvious problem however, was the one-dimensional nature of the forward line. The team seemed focussed on going to Robbo who was well covered by an extra man dropping back into his region. Melbourne's delivery to him was appalling so it wasn't difficult for the Lions defenders to swoop on the ball and move it from defence to attack with consummate ease. The Demons badly needed another avenue to goal but unfortunately, this was only opened up in junk time in the final quarter when a number of goals to different individuals made things look a bit more respectable.

There wasn't much for the fans to be happy about but I suppose young blokes like Brock McLean (the standout for mine), Sylvia, Nathan Jones, Matthew Bate, Colin Garland, Lynden Dunn, James Frawley, Chris Johnson, Paul Johnson and Newton all learned a valuable lesson on what's required to succeed at this level. However, they still have a long way to go.

Of the more experienced players, Jeff White, Paul Wheatley, Nathan Brown and Nathan Carroll (when moved onto Brown) played their hearts out but that's not enough when your team's being pantsed.

The club's lack of professionalism was demonstrated when only a few of the younger players were introduced to the waiting crowd of fans at the after game function. The young blokes were good but that's not good enough. The senior players should have fronted the fans if only for a few minutes. Some of these fans have waited a long time for their team to come to this part of the world. Others travelled a long way to see the game. They deserved to have been treated with a bit more respect by the club and by the team.

But what do you expect from an outfit that displayed such an appalling lack of professionalism as was shown to the football world both on and off the field last night? The only thing that's left to be said is that whatever review the club undertakes now that the season's "done and dusted" will need to be a lot more far reaching than just the coaching position if its 150th anniversary year is to be both successful and memorable. Meanwhile, despite the fact that the boys and I have nothing to celebrate this morning, we're going to spend the day working on demolishing the contents of our esky if for nothing else than to forget everything that happened last night.

Melbourne 1.0.6 3.4.22 5.8.38 12.10.82

Brisbane Lions 6.5.41 7.12.54 14.14.98 18.18.126

Goals

Melbourne Davey 4 White 2 Brown Godfrey Jones McLean Robertson Sylvia

Brisbane Lions Brown 6 Copeland 3 Brennan 2 Adcock Drummond Leuenberger McGrath Notting Power Rischitelli

Best

Melbourne McLean Brown White Wheatley Davey Sylvia

Brisbane Lions Brown Power Lappin Copeland Drummond

Changes

Cameron Bruce (hamstring) replaced in the selected side by Colin Garland

Injuries

Nil

Reports

Joel Macdonald (Brisbane Lions) for wrestling in the third quarter.

Colin Sylvia (Melbourne) for wrestling in the third quarter.

Umpires Ellis Nicholls Pannell

Crowd 22,708 at the Gabba