OUT OF THE TRAIN WRECK

by Whispering Jack

For three years from 2004 to 2006, Melbourne travelled along comfortably at just below the elite level of the AFL competition. The Demons finished among the top sides, winning the right to play off in finals and appeared to be moving forward on a path that was slowly but surely drawing them closer to the game's hot spots – the places where you go when your team's really on fire. They made the semi finals in 2006 and were considered by most of football's pundits to be on the right track for a top four finish or better in 2007.

Then things went terribly awry and a train wreck happened.

As in 2006, the team lost its early games to be sitting on a 0-3 record after defeats at the hands of St. Kilda, Hawthorn and Geelong. This time however, there was no stirring recovery as there had been last year.

There was no cohesiveness in the way the Demons played their early games; they struggled at home and were worse away from home. By season's end, there had been too many dispirited efforts for supporters to look back on the season with so much as a glimmer of satisfaction.

There were a few close calls but it took until the onset of winter and the tenth round of the season for the club to break the ice with a win over Adelaide at the MCG. That was closely followed by a rousing victory over the old enemy in the Queens Birthday match and suddenly there was renewed optimism evident at the club.

The excitement didn't last too long however and the wheels fell off on a cold Friday night at the MCG when the team was thrashed by bottom side Richmond in a match that sealed Neale Daniher's fate.

The mid season appointment of a caretaker coach in Mark Reilly consigned the club to a long period of aimless drifting without any discernable direction as the season meandered to a sad end.

How does one explain such a disaster?

Daniher was in his tenth year as coach, time was running out and he took what must now be regarded as a calculated risk. Melbourne had finished the previous year in fifth place but was ranked first among the Victorians. The problem was how to break into that top four grouping of West Coast, Sydney, Adelaide and Fremantle?

The first premise was reasonably straightforward - in order to do so you had to beat them during the home and away season and you had to have a team capable of beating them on their own home turf. The Eagles had succeeded in breaking down the Crows’ early dominance of 2006 with what was described as the "run and carry" style and that was a direction that Melbourne took with its pre season training. The idea was to mould a team that was physically capable of carrying out this running style of game. Train them to be fit, sleek and capable of enduring a long season of run, run and more run.

The problem was that you had to be capable of doing that as well as to use a football with a measure of skill. In this aspect, the football department not only miscalculated the team's capacity to adapt to the new style but also failed the flexibility test of changing course when it was clear that things weren't working out as planned.

The pre season trial games (including the Nab Cup game against Hawthorn) demonstrated that the Demon side were not quite adept at carrying out the plan. When the season opened on a Thursday night in March, they stumbled, fumbled and bungled: they simply couldn't get it right. Players were hesitant, made errors and were brushed aside by stronger bodied opponents. Something was wrong!

And if that wasn't enough, the injuries started to come and, when they came, they cut deeply and they never went away!

According to the AFL Grand Final Record, "Melbourne's poor year was not helped by a horror run with injuries, with Jeff White the only player to play all 22 matches." Injuries are often a poor excuse for failure but in Melbourne's case, 2007 was a season so devastated by them that you don't have to look much further to find reasons for the club's dramatic demise.

The extent of the injury plague comes into clear focus when you sit down and start looking at standout players for the season. So many of them were afflicted by some form of injury or other during the season that any ranking list of players is virtually meaningless in terms of looking at the future on field course of the club.

Melbourne used 39 players in 2007 – a record since the clubs went to reduced senior lists after the introduction of the salary cap and national draft and, as mentioned above, White was the only team member to play in all games. Compare that with Port Adelaide which had nine such players in its grand final team and the Kangaroos which had 10 in their preliminary final team. Last weekend, Geelong had forty players in their combined AFL and VFL sides and only three players (one a rookie) were unavailable at the end of a long, hard season. The Demons had more than that missing for the opening round of 2007 and things reached epidemic proportions by the end of the year when the number of players unavailable was 15!

There was very little encouragement or cheering on the score of individual players. For years, Melbourne fans have been lamenting the club's lack of champion players and more recently another concern has been that too many of its better players were closing in on veteran status.

When the season began, the club's best chances for future stardom were Brock McLean and Jared Rivers. Unfortunately for the Demons both fell to the injury curse. McLean recovered from a foot injury sustained in round 1 to play in the second half of the year but he was unable to revisit his form of earlier seasons on a regular basis. Rivers wore the jumper on only three occasions during the year and was one of five men whose seasons were completely finished by the time the season's half way mark had ticked over.

This left very few "rising stars" apart Matthew Bate who I describe as a "slow riser", Lynden Dunn who made a late charge in that area and of course, Nathan Jones who made his debut late last year and gained a Nab AFL Rising Star nomination in his short stint of seven games. This year, he notched up another 21 games and he was often among the Demons' best for the season. Jones was rewarded with recognition from the judges of the NAB AFL Rising Star award again this year and they ultimately placed him third for 2007 behind Joel Selwood and Scott Pendlebury.

Ricky Petterd was the best of the debutants but his season was curtailed by a life threatening collapsed lung during the round 14 game against Carlton.

Michael Newton's debut was much anticipated by many Demon fans and he was virtually the club's only prize winner in 2007 – taking out the mark of the year for his hanger against the Kangaroos in round 16. A year earlier I had witnessed him taking three such marks in the course of one afternoon in a VFL game at Casey Fields. His elevation to the team for Daniher's farewell highlighted the difference between Melbourne's then development philosophy and that of Mick Malthouse at Collingwood. The buzz phrase at the Pies is the fast tracking of players but in Newton's case, he was slow tracked. The jury remains out however, as to where his freakish talents will take him but he could become a very special player.

The age factor remains a major area of concern for new coach Dean Bailey who is embarking on a youth policy. We have already seen player retirements and early delistings. There are sure to be more changes to the list.

Bailey was a major factor behind Port Adelaide's return as a power in 2007 (notwithstanding its massive defeat in the grand final). He is strong on player development and that is encouraging because he has scope in a number of areas to move the club forward and out of the train wreck of 2007. Apart from introducing his own innovative coaching style and bringing a new broom to sweep the club clean, these include -

Firstly, there are a dozen players on the list whose output in 2007 was curtailed or severely limited by injuries. Things will be different if and when the following can come back as regulars in the senior team with fit bodies and a full pre season behind them – names such as Clint Bartram, Cameron Bruce, Travis Johnstone, Brock McLean, Brent Moloney, David Neitz, Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Russell Robertson (if he stays at the club), Paul Wheatley, Matthew Whelan and Adem Yze. These are effectively the club's first and best recruits for 2008.

Secondly, there are a large number of players on the list who I consider as "undeveloped" footballers i.e. players who have yet to attain anything near their full potential. Players like Brock McLean and Colin Sylvia were top 5 draft picks four years ago but have not attained the high levels of consistent high performance of Collingwood pair Thomas and Pendlebury who gave them two year's start. If Bailey can fast track the development of this group then the club could be well on its way to a new era of success (there's some repetition of names from the first list here): -

Clint Bartram, Matthew Bate, Daniel Bell, Jace Bode, Simon Buckley, Lynden Dunn, James Frawley, Colin Garland, Chris Johnson, Paul Johnson, Nathan Jones, Brock McLean, Brent Moloney, Michael Newton, Ricky Petterd, Jared Rivers, Colin Sylvia, Matthew Warnock and Isaac Weetra.

There are nineteen players on this list although I'm not suggesting that all of them will make it or be star players at the club or that all of them are going to be around the place in twelve month's time (or even a month's time for that matter) but the club needs to work on this list to ensure that a significant number develop to their full potential in the next couple of seasons by which time at least half of them should form part of the backbone of the club.

Thirdly and finally, there is the area of trading and drafting where the club appears to have adopted a far more aggressive tack than in the past year or so and that is an area that could lead the club to more exciting places in 2008 and beyond.