AFL 2024: Questions about Melbourne’s forward line get louder after injuries
One of the key questions heading into 2024 is whether Melbourne can score more to get back to flag contention. But injuries could have them in a worse spot than they were four months ago.
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Speaking directly to members as Melbourne headed towards its new year break, Simon Goodwin was clear that the club knew it needed to score more to land a second premiership in this era.
But more than four months after a dysfunctional forward line was the main culprit in a bitter straight-sets finals exit, the solution to the scoring woes in Demonland doesn’t appear any more obvious.
Heading into the off-season, one of the biggest premiership-shaping questions in the AFL was on how Melbourne would fix its forward line.
Unable to break into a powerful Brisbane Lions forward line, Tom Fullarton may not be an early season answer to the forward-ruck storm clouds that hung over Brodie Grundy’s head in 2023.
The recruit is feared to have done serious damage to his hamstring at training on Friday, with the club to know more early next week.
Initial fears pointed to a hamstring tendon injury, which typically take months to heal and would take out the early rounds of the season for the 24-year-old.
Veteran Ben Brown won’t be there in opening round either, as he faces up to two months on the sidelines after having knee surgery on Thursday.
Tom McDonald played next to Brown up forward in the glorious 2021 flag win, but he has been training in defence for much of the summer.
And the 31-year-old has played less than ten games in three of his last four seasons.
Jake Melksham is still nursing an ACL injury and won’t play until the back half of the season and Joel Smith, who kicked three goals in a losing semi-final last year, remains locked out of the club due to a provisional drug suspension.
The good news is that Harrison Petty is almost back to full training and Bayley Fritsch has been looking sharp since Christmas.
Fritsch barely trained with the main group before the year-end break and Petty is only beginning to step in, so that is two less than ideal preparations for the players the Demons plan to lead their goalkicking.
Forwards coach Greg Stafford may need to burn some sage to scare away what is looming as a curse among his players.
Jacob van Rooyen has had a solid summer and had an excellent season last year for a player who began the year as a teenager.
He is a strong grab and a straight kick but he doesn’t turn 21 until April and you can’t expect a player of that age with 28 career goals to his name to lead a premiership attack.
Shane McAdam was brought over from Adelaide and has kicked 72 goals in 50 AFL games.
The other sticking point is the absence of Clayton Oliver, which leaves Goodwin in a precarious position if he wants to put Christian Petracca ahead of the ball to start the year.
Oliver could be back by the start of the season and over his personal issues, but for now he is not in the mix.
Petracca played well as a half-forward rotating through the middle in the back half of last year, and some of that came with Oliver sidelined by a hamstring injury, but it remains a risk to take him away from the ball if his running mate is not around.
Now, much of Melbourne’s improvement ahead of the footy will be answered not by personnel but by what the Demons do with the ball in hand.
Even greats like prime Tony Lockett and Gary Ablett Sr would have thrown their arms up at the endless long bombs sent into the Melbourne forward line in September if they were waiting under those persistent high balls.
Goodwin preached at a member forum in December that the Dees were just one goal away from being the best.
He is right in the numbers – if Melbourne kicked one more goal a game during the home and away season, it would have been the best scoring team of 2023.
“We are looking for one goal. One goal a game takes us from sixth to first, the best offensive teams,” he said.
“That is the small margins we are working with in our industry and that is the difference between winning and not winning: one goal.”
They shuffled the decks somewhat off the field with Troy Chaplin taking charge of transition attack, as well as defence, to try and get the ball into attack quicker and cleaner.
The Dees may have to shuffle the decks with personnel too because at the moment the answer to their woes is still unclear.
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