Max Gawn followed for Amazon Drive to Survive style documentary during Melbourne Demons' Simon Goodwin sacking

An Amazon documentary made by the producers of F1's Drive to Survive will delve into the AFL world before the start of the 2026 season.

Anyone familiar with Drive to Survive will know the Netflix phenomenon helped launch Formula 1 into a more mainstream audience by providing no holds barred access to the behind the scenes chaos, coupled with exclusive interviews with everyone involved.

Well, Final Siren: Inside the AFL, promises to do the same, with one episode following Melbourne captain Max Gawn during the sacking of coach Simon Goodwin last year and the turmoil that followed.

The Demons parted ways with the 2021 premiership coach in the final month of the season, and while some expected a move to come at the end of the year, nobody thought they would pull the trigger at that point.

And episode two of this four-part documentary series will reveal all of the behind the scenes machinations from Gawn's perspective in the wake of the shock decision.

The eight-time All-Australian outlined what fans can expect when the series drops on February 27.

"It focused on us late in the year, around when Goodwin departed," Gawn told Wide World of Sports.

"I think that storyline in itself, I don't think majority of football fans would understand what is happening behind the four walls when a coach leaves, particularly a premiership coach who's been there for 10 years, so I think that's a really interesting story and quite confronting.

"There was a camera sometimes near me when I didn't want it to be, but I think that adds to the story. I had a lot of fun.

"I think, bullishly, Aussie Rules is the hardest sport to play in the world and if you're trying to get up for a game six days apart, you'll see how strenuous our recovery is, how strenuous training is and then you'll hopefully get to see a new side of me, because I was really interested in the mic'd up stuff during games.

"Being out there on the ground, how much do I actually talk? What do I talk about? I think that's pretty cool."

Max Gawn and Tom McDonald in the documentary's trailer.  Amazon

In the moment, while all of this chaos was unfolding at the club, Gawn admits it was at times hard knowing cameras were following his every move.

"It was a lot," Gawn admitted regarding having documentary cameras around when Goodwin was sacked.

"It was the fact that Goody got sacked and it got played out in the public eye, even more so with the documentary, it was a lot to take in.

"At the time, (the sacking) was obviously quite a surprise. Which is a good thing to be honest because that it means it didn't leak to me in the wrong way and I wasn't involved in conversations I shouldn't need to be in.

"The last three weeks of the season, we're battling it with players and some don't know where their career is going, some will get delisted in three weeks, some will get traded, some coaches won't have jobs, there's a lot going on.

"And as captain you're sort of trying to make sure you get the performance out of the team and keep morale high for the last three weeks, because in the end, 80 per cent of that group is still here today.

"So if we had have capitulated in those last three weeks, we might have made some dents on our culture that potentially we wouldn't have been able to get back for this year.

"I think a few people might have kept their jobs from how they went in those last three weeks."

Gawn's episode will also focus on Fremantle superstar Nathan Fyfe and how he battled across what would be the final season of his career.

Episode one revolves around Toby Greene and Marcus Bontempelli, episode three Dayne Zorko and Touk Miller and episode four Brisbane's run through September from the perspective of Zorko and Cam Rayner. The Lions went on to win the premiership.

The Melbourne ruckman is a big fan of sporting documentaries and knows AFL fans will enjoy insight into areas of the game they don't usually see.

"I think hopefully they'll love the inside footage on the ground like in the change rooms on game day," Gawn said.

"I think that's always pretty cool and my history of watching sports docos, not much really gets me going more than the real behind the scenes footage on game day, so that is pretty cool, and I can't wait to see that from the other guys as well.

"But then, like I said, I think the strenuous game that we play in, seeing how we get up from day to day, but then also seeing how a captain reacts to his good friend and long-time coach being sacked, and move straight onto what's best for the club.

"I feel like this is biased, but I feel like if I was watching my own doco as an outsider, it'd be kind of cool to see how a playing group reacts when they lose their long-time coach.

"I've only seen the parts of the documentary they've taken from me, but what they've taken from me, if they've taken that from the other six players, it's going to be something that I'm definitely going to watch. I know they were right up there in some pretty crucial moments.

"Meetings with me and pretty high up people at Melbourne, they were sitting in on, and then also pretty crucial moments as well.

"We lost to Collingwood by a kick (in round 24). The fact that you've got the microphone there, I'm pretty untapped in that game I'm pretty sure."

Max Gawn speaks during the trailer for the documentary.  Amazon

The documentary will also delve into the final three weeks of the season at the Dees following the Goodwin sacking.

And Gawn admits things got a bit loose around the club.

"It's definitely unfiltered and it probably helped that Goody wasn't there, but we let the cameras in on everything," he revealed.

"We had no real intel to hide because (interim coach) Troy Chaplin wasn't trying to coach us the following season, so none of the information was really that important to hide from the public.

"Once I'd seen the final edit (of the documentary), I was like 'let's get more in there (next year), let's tell them more'. We certainly didn't pull anything out of the documentary, there wasn't anything we were unhappy about.

"More eyes on the TV will help grow our great game."

Did we get paid to do this, or did some lunatic sign up thinking last season was going to be a heartwarming redemption story?

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Supermercado
Missing words. Possibly losing my mind.

Getting a Bret Hart 'Wrestling with Shadows' feel for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.

27 minutes ago, Supermercado said:

Did we paid to do this, or did some lunatic sign up thinking last season was going to be a heartwarming redemption story?

Might be a good idea if we have a good season. Not sure about releasing prior to the season.

If we have a shocking season, Goodwin will laugh and be able to say he wasn’t the issue even though he was a significant part of the issue.

34 minutes ago, layzie said:

Getting a Bret Hart 'Wrestling with Shadows' feel for anyone who knows what I'm talking about.

Bailey Laurie will be playing the part of Dennis Stamp.

Other than Max further building his profile for his post-football career, I really don't see how this kind of thing benefits either the club or the individuals involved.

Sure, if they let the cameras in during the 2021 season we'd all come out looking great, but this only opens the door to further scrutiny and criticism.

Was watching a long interview of Claire Williams recently. Claire was the Team Principal of the Williams F1 team.

She discussed the impact of Drive to Survive on F1 and made the point that sport is now far more than the race but is more about the story arc.

Practical impact was that in 2016 teams were struggling to sign "Title Sponsors" for $8M. Now they are knocking them back at $80M.

I think we'll see a lot more shows like this

Ho hum. A doco ? Really !!

The only worthwhile doco would be why he wasn't let go after 2023 & left to inflict 2 more years of excuses, "learnings" & other BS on long suffering supporters.

7 minutes ago, Cranky Franky said:

Ho hum. A doco ? Really !!

The only worthwhile doco would be why he wasn't let go after 2023 & left to inflict 2 more years of excuses, "learnings" & other BS on long suffering supporters.

You've been dining out on this theme for far too long, Cranky. I suppose you have to justify your moniker in some way. The fact that another high-profile AFL team snapped him up in no time should be enough to inform you that Goody's learnings are valued far beyond the doors of the MFC.