The fractured football club behind Melbourne's eight seconds of madness
Off-field morale at Melbourne has been low as a result. Not only did acting CEO David Chippindall move deep into the process to replace Pert with few ever believing he would be appointed, but Chippindall has been left to run the club all season as interim CEO. As the season has continued staff have become increasingly dismayed at the lengthy handover period.
Incredibly, with Pert departing last November, his replacement Paul Guerra – also overseas in New York in recent weeks – will not take over until September despite being appointed in April. Not only has this delayed crucial developments in the club's push to finally secure a new home base at Caulfield, but it highlighted the leadership vacuum at the top as the team's performance dived.
The reality that Guerra has said he could not extricate himself from the top job at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce has been difficult to swallow. Guerra was contacted for comment.
And the interim role has been tough for Chippindall to wear, given he was overlooked not for a candidate with strong football credentials but by one with no club experience. Respected former Port Adelaide boss Keith Thomas was also in the running and had some backing from the AFL. But he was removed from the process after the discovery of an anti-war social media post relating to conflict in Gaza.
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This was at a time when the club was negotiating with Jewish stakeholders in the bid to secure its new home at Caulfield. One of the options for a Demons base is a parcel of land between Caulfield Racecourse and a planned campus for Jewish school Mt Scopus.
Despite denials at the time, the board did not rule out the prospect of approaching the then-uncontracted Luke Beveridge by season's end in the early months of a year that has lurched from bad to worse. This would indicate the Smith-Brad Green led operation remains open to change.
But the pressing problem for Melbourne remains the lack of leadership and by consequence the opportunity to correctly review the running of a football operation. Monday's scheduled board meeting saw incoming president Smith zoom in as his long-planned European sojourn nears an end.
Green has bristled this season at suggestions he is the interim president but given the pressure placed upon Smith, the former MCC president and Demons 200-gamer, to step into the role despite his travel plans, the strong impression all season is that the club had been treading water on and off the field.
Darren Shand, the former All Blacks manager and motivational speaker whom Goodwin and Pert encountered in New Zealand shortly after Pert's controversial defence of the club's culture in late 2023, was also at the board meeting. Shand conducted the post-season review last year which led to little meaningful change.
The football department has been marked in recent years by some strange and at times eyebrow-raising job-sharing decisions.
This was underlined again in June when the club's chief communications executive Clare Pettyfor was appointed head of the club's AFLW program with a role in list management after the departure of Marcus Wagner. The latter reportedly navigated roles in both the men's and women's program. It seems unfeasible that Pettyfor can balance three such crucial roles.
Port Adelaide premiership coach Mark Williams remains probably the highest-paid development coach in the competition – not unjustifiable given his credentials – but he is out of contract. So is high-performance boss Selwyn Griffith.
Credited for his key part in the triumph of 2021, Williams has struggled more recently with the demarcation between his AFL and VFL duties. Williams, with his brainchild Sherrin Precision football enterprise, has also performed the role of goalkicking coach this year.
The move of highly rated defence coach Troy Chaplin to oversee the forwards – a change which came under scrutiny from this masthead at the aforementioned breakfast – has not reaped the results hoped for this season.
An even stranger double-up was the move to use player development manager Reece Conca as a runner on match days, a clear conflict given he was delivering instructions to players at the same time as he was also responsible for their welfare.
The club has struggled with behavioural and cultural problems, including allegations of substance abuse among players.
The responsibility of minding Clayton Oliver over his troubled summer of 2023-'24 was handed to the club's popular media boss, Matt Goodrope.
Goodrope remains a respected figure at the club from the board down, but surely he was not adequately qualified for the daily role with Oliver at a time the player's life seemed in crisis and he was undergoing direct and regular intervention from the AFL's mental health team, league chiefs, AFLPA bosses and Pert.
Coach Goodwin and captain Gawn have been forced to carry the public leadership duties all season and did so again this week after the horror final quarter against St Kilda last Sunday.
'We have been able to go through these challenges before with clarity and strength and stability to create success,' said Goodwin on Thursday.
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