Why Demons had to sack Simon Goodwin

The Australian

18 hours ago

One mulligan is acceptable, two simply aren't.
The Melbourne board really had no alternative but to part ways with Simon Goodwin given the trajectory the club had been heading under his watch over the past four years.
When they sat down on Monday night to discuss whether to pull the plug on the 2021 premiership coach, the only question they had to consider was whether Goodwin was going to be the Demons' next premiership coach.
Given the state of the list and the performances over the past 12 months, they knew they were no longer in the premiership window and at best they might be four or five years away from contending again.
Could they see Goodwin being the man to lead the next charge? The simple answer was no.
They then had to get their heads around whether they were happy to cop a $1 million payout for Goodwin's final year of his contract. In the end they realised they had to stem the bleeding.
They had given Goodwin a mulligan for last year where the Demons finished 14th in a year that saw two of their best players, Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver, at various stages wanting out from the club.
The season from hell had come off the back of two inglorious finals series where they'd finished top four at the end of the home and away season and then flopped badly with straight sets exits from September.
Goodwin had promised to get all Kumbaya over the summer. Rebuilding relationships was his buzz phrase, tennis legend Ash Barty's mindset coach Ben Crowe was brought in with more focus on bonding than kicking the Sherrin.
On the eve of the season Goodwin was asked in a fans forum what he was hoping for the most in 2025.
'This one is really simple for me. It's about making sure our players love the game. They have fun, they enjoy themselves, they smile, and ultimately, they reach their full potential,' he said.
'That's the biggest thing I'm looking for, for the players in 2025 to see the joy that they have for the game, and I'm sure if they're having fun and enjoying themselves, that our supporters are going to be smiling a lot as well.'
Three weeks later no-one was smiling and the seeds of Goodwin's demise had been sewn.
A three-point loss to the GWS Giants at the MCG to open the season can be squared away but a 59-point loss to North Melbourne at Marvel Stadium in Round 2 followed by a 58-point loss to the Gold Coast at the MCG the following week simply can't.
Losing the first five games of the season – including another unforgivable 39-point loss to Essendon in Gather Round – meant the Demons were chasing their tails all season.
Then the spotlight went from don't worry we now love each other again to the outdated playing style, the lack of any sort of working forward structure and a clear black hole in the development of players.
That's all on the coach.
Goodwin tried to get away from the contested slow ball movement style but either his players didn't listen or it wasn't drilled into them properly. There was a flicker mid-season where they seemed to attack more from halfback but it was short-lived.
And the fact the forward line was being held up by 33-year-old Jake Melksham was an indictment. It has been Melbourne's achilles heel for years and Goodwin's failure to find a solution was a big cross against his name.
As was the lack of improvement throughout the playing ranks this season. You could argue only four players increased their level of output in 2025.
Back pocket Jake Bowey, Daniel Turner, Kysaiah Pickett and Melksham. That's it and that doesn't look good on a whiteboard in a board meeting.
With the season slipping away there was an understanding at Melbourne that they could no longer keep going back to the well with the Big Five – Max Gawn, Steven May, Jack Viney, Petracca and Oliver.
Something had to give.
Oliver's huge contract meant he was going to be hard to move even though he wanted to go to Geelong last year. Despite saying the right things the lingering fallout from Petracca's injury last season still lingers as does Collingwood's interest.
Viney won the best and fairest last year, had North Melbourne knocking so got a new four-year deal which at 31 seemed overs. He then struggled this year with his spot in the midfield being questioned.
May continues to find trouble on and off the field but at 33 does he have any suitors?
As for Gawn, he was again left to be the public face of the club and he'd want to be getting paid handsomely for his weekly morning radio gig given every week he was required to throw his support behind the coach and say things are about to turn around.
In the end the board got sick of hearing the same things over and over again. The coach repeatedly finding 'learners' in losses which, given their talent, should never have been happening in the first place.
Fans grew tired of it and voted with their feet as attendances plummeted and even in their eyes it was becoming obvious that the credits Goodwin had in the bank for breaking the club's 57-year premiership drought had run out.
For diehard Demons fans one of Goodwin's more memorable moments came back in 2018 when they'd won five games in a row and the coach borrowed a line from the Hollywood blockbuster The Wolf Of Wall Street to address the hype around his team.
He wheeled out the word 'fugazi' – a slang term, generally meaning fake, bogus or not genuine – which Matthew McConaughey's character had dropped in the Academy Award-winning film in conversation with lead character Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
'It goes something like it's fugazi, it's a whazy, it's a woozie,' was Goodwin's movie quote.
Unfortunately for the Melbourne coach there was nothing fugazi about the phone call he received on Monday night. Watch: Petracca reacts to Goodwin's bombshell axing Scott Gullan Score Columnist - AFL/Athletics writer
Scott Gullan has more than 25 years experience in sports journalism. He is News Corp's chief athletics writer and award-winning AFL correspondent. He's covered numerous Olympic Games, world championships and Commonwealth Games. He's also the man behind the Herald Sun's popular Score column. AFL
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Simon Goodwin's time at Melbourne is over with the premiership coach sacked in the midst of another disappointing Demons season.