Simon Goodwin has seen the fog lift at Melbourne. He can sense it at training, hear it in the players’ voices and he can most certainly feel it within himself.

In his ninth season in charge of the Demons, the 48-year-old premiership coach says he has been “completely reinvigorated” by the clean air and change at Melbourne over summer.

After a poor season that brought to a head a variety of issues, including a bitter board brawl, Goodwin at the end of last season helped “pull the football program apart” after twin reviews.

What the Demons recognised was the methods that took them to the top in 2021 no longer worked. And the off-field distractions, including Joel Smith’s drugs charge, attacks on the Demons’ culture, and the legal stoush with former president Glen Bartlett, had sapped the joy out of the place. There was a fog at AAMI Park. A sadness.

The past three years have been some of the hardest of Goodwin’s football life.

For periods, he didn’t want to leave his own house as allegations about his personal life rolled on and impacted his family, while he tried desperately to keep his team – narrowly pipped in the 2023 finals series – at the top.

But this summer, the Band-Aid has been ripped off.

With a change of president and chief executive, new coaches, and the board fight finally behind them, the Demons came together for some soul-searching at the end of 2024, determined to not only address the issues involving superstar midfielders Clayton Oliver and Christian Petracca, but also begin a healing process.

For the first time in years, Goodwin started with a blank canvas as his new-look coaching staff began drawing up a new game style, a new training program, and new ways of opening up to each other.

And in the few months since, Goodwin has felt that dark cloud that had consumed the club finally lift, bringing new methods, more creativity, more happiness, and most importantly, fresh hope ahead of the 2025 season.

“The club has had a heavy cloud over it,” Goodwin said.

“Rightly or wrongly, there has been a real heaviness and it seeps into your footy club.

“As much as you just want to try to showcase the game and get better, the reality is you are distracted.

“That goes for everyone at the footy club. You are distracted by how you are seen externally because of the issues that are going on.

“You feel it, you live it. Your friends talk about it. Your family talks about it. You read it every day. You listen to it. As much as you want to avoid it, it is reality.

“And that is what is great right at this moment, because there is clear air. There is a freshness.

“We get a chance to feel the energy in our football club again.”

As part of the review recommendations, Melbourne players are spending less time at the club, and are given more flexibility to complete their recovery in their own time this year.

There is more trust at Melbourne. More player empowerment. More lightness in the locker room.

It has been the most criticised club culture in the AFL, but Goodwin says a fresh start has helped create “a place of belonging” where everyone at Melbourne “celebrates what each individual brings to the team”.

“We were all feeling heavy and I didn’t like that environment,” he said.

“We needed to make coming to the club more enjoyable and that is why this is a new chapter.”

A NEW MELBOURNE WAY

On the field, there is a commitment to play “a new way” as part of a complete game plan redesign, and key positional switches.

Playmaker Caleb Windsor has been sent from wing to half-back, Harrison Petty will return to a key defensive position after a tough year in attack, and VFL wrecking ball Aidan Johnson has been brought in to help spice up the forward half.

And top draftees Harvey Langford – an inside midfield bull – and Morrish medallist Xavier Lindsay – the silky-skilled outside running man – could both play AFL in the early rounds.

But it won’t be the same long-down-the-line tactics that drove Melbourne in 2021-23, and returned for the second half of last year.

In the most candid interview of his coaching career, Goodwin said he made an error zigzagging in game style last year, leaving the team “confused”.

At the start of last season, the Demons changed up their ball movement in a bid to find the forward-half efficiency it needed to be successful in September.

In the 2023 finals series, the Demons had 32 more inside-50s than Collingwood and eight more scoring shots than Carlton and lost both games in heartbreaking fashion.

“We would have more inside-50s but lose. That was the consistent theme at Melbourne, which is frustrating because we did a lot right,” Goodwin said.

“So you start to scratch for the five per cent extra.”

So the Demons changed the game plan for 2024 and enjoyed a strong start, winning seven of their first nine games. But they were belted by a combined 127 points by West Coast and Fremantle in rounds 11 and 13.

And that is when the Melbourne coaching staff blinked.

To stop the bleeding on the scoreboard, Goodwin brought back key parts of the old 2021 premiership game style after the round 15 mid-season bye. In hindsight, it was a mistake.

“In the middle part of the year we got a little bit wonky,” he said.

“We lost some personnel and we lost a few games really badly and we were totally uncompetitive and it was un-Melbourne-like.

“Belted by Fremantle by 92 points, lost to West Coast in Perth by 35 points.

“Similar to players, coaches are no different, we get nervous. We lose confidence.

“At that point we asked ourselves, how do we help this team become more competitive?

“So we went back to a little bit of what we knew. And in hindsight that (old method) probably wasn’t the best way to go.

“We were more competitive yes, but we were still losing games. We don’t evolve. We don’t improve and we don’t get better. We don’t grow as a team, as a group, as a club.

“If I had my time again, I would have continued down the path of exploring that different way of playing and that is the learning. And that is really what our summer has been about. Keep exploring, keep looking at different ways, for better ways.”

‘THE HEALING THAT NEEDED TO BE DONE’

The spotlight will be on, again. The club has not won a final since the 2021 flag and Goodwin is out of contract at the end of 2026.

While the key forward options are still very raw, Melbourne has the talent and ambition to return to the September stage.

So, what are the internal expectations in 2025?

“Just to get our days right, get our training right and just continue to be open to exploring new ways of doing things,” he said.

“We want to build a clear identity in our game style, but we want to be able to win multiple different ways. That is the challenge for every team – to do everything well.

“I want our fans to see changes in the way we move the ball but also in the way we defend because the reality is we weren’t good at any phase of the game last year.”

But before they could whip the Sherrins out to start the pre-season, Melbourne headed to Bright in north-east Victoria for a bonding camp run by mindset master Ben Crowe.

The tumult of the end of last season had to be addressed.

When Petracca and Oliver considered their futures for different reasons at the end of 2024, it was unclear if Melbourne was a fully united football club.

And any remaining cracks are always going to be exposed when the on-field pressure comes in the new season.

Not ducking the question, Goodwin said “there was some healing that needed to be done”.

So in the Bright team meetings, players opened up about not only last year, but the past few years, and emotions came to the fore.

“It took a lot of vulnerability from a lot of players, and a lot of vulnerability from staff, myself included,” he said.

“Ben (Crowe) had worked with a lot of teams and some elite athletes around the world and he was unbelievable. He has been a constant in our pre-season.

“We would do some things differently last year and there have been some learnings we would all take a lot from it. So we were able to express all that and move forward.

“There were some conversations that needed to be had, but we can’t live in the past.

“We hold the pen to write the next chapter and we will hold that pen and we will write.

“That will be our theme for the year.”

“But the question is how do we do it? I think we are all excited by that part and the new ideas that we are exploring”.

That is where the clean-slate Demons have gone to work in painstaking fashion on the track, reviewing every training session in sharp detail to harness the true power of the list.

FORWARD PRESSURE, BRIGHT FUTURE

There may be some bumps early in 2025, as the young forward line grows together around Jacob van Rooyen, 21, and Daniel Turner, 23.

Turner played only one half in attack in the VFL last season when Goodwin saw him pluck a couple of marks and elevated him into the AFL side last year.

The attacking setup is not yet the finished article, and patience will be required.

But Goodwin doesn’t see the premiership window shutting. The senior coach envisages a new dawn, perhaps a bit like Hawthorn, which won the flag in 2008 and then went through some growing pains before its golden reign.

And the reality is Melbourne can’t rely on Max Gawn or Steven May to be best on ground every week to win games. The growth is in the young talent. And Melbourne, after another two top-10 picks at the draft, has plenty.

“The future has never been brighter,” Goodwin said.

“List management has done an amazing job to give us a chance to have some success short term but also looking long-term.

“The amount of depth and talent that we have got 24-and-under we are really excited about.”

But the key milestones aren’t only coming on the field for the senior coach.

Goodwin married his partner, Kristine Brooks, who is the Australian boss of investment group Milford, in front of family and friends in Bali over Christmas, and said he has “never been happier”.

“I feel as light as I’ve ever felt. It’s been a tough period,” he said.

“To have the things spoken about me personally has been tough.

“I’m (now) happily married. It was an incredible time with the family. “I put myself out there with my (all-white) outfit, clearly. I walked out there (for the wedding ceremony) and my brother said ‘What number are you batting?’ And then I walked a little bit further down the aisle and Bernie Vince said ‘Are you playing bowls for Stansbury?’ (laughing)

“So I’ve never been happier. I feel fresh and I’m enjoying coaching as much as I ever have and hopefully everything is all behind us.

“Hopefully, in time, people will see the person I am and we can all move forward.”

And the motivation to get back to the top remains sky high.

“I have had a lot of adversity in my life – whether it was my parents separating when I was young, or struggling to learn at school, or not being tall enough to play football to a high level. Always being ‘too small’. Being criticised.

“(But) the one thing that has always got me through is love from the people around (me), which have made a massive difference.

“It hasn’t been perfect, and there have been challenges and adversity that I certainly didn’t predict.

“But I am growing and I feel right now as a coach, as it sits here today, I am better now than what I was even 12 months ago or two years ago.

“I have learned more in the past three years than I thought I would ever learn.

“But I am incredibly proud of my family. And how I have handled myself. And I am excited about what we can do moving forward.

“I have never been more invigorated to be the best coach possible for the Melbourne footy club, and that is what I will try to be.”