Melbourne faces some big questions after Max Gawn’s dominance with Brodie Grundy watching from the stands

Brodie Grundy says his partnership with Max Gawn remains an “exciting prospect” despite being relegated to scratch match duties as the Demons skipper produced his best game of the year against Brisbane.

Josh Barnes

@Josh__Barnes

9 min read

July 15, 2023 - 8:16PM

News Corp Australia Sports Newsroom

Jake Melksham celebrates his clutch goal which lifted the Demons to a famous win. Picture: Mark Stewart

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The remaking of Brodie Grundy may have begun with a conversation in the cold with a man and his dog.

Playing out at Casey Fields on chilly Saturday morning in a practice match against St Kilda, Grundy was stationed as a deep forward for most of the shortened game as he begins life as a permanent forward.

He kicked one goal – outmuscling Saint Tom Highmore deep in attack and converting a set shot – and had limited impact, gathering nine kicks, seven handballs and six marks.

There were no pack-breaking contested grabs and little explosion off the mark to mark on the lead.

But it was the conversations in the huddles that mattered most as Grundy learns his craft.

The ex-Magpie had detailed chats with Melbourne forwards coach Greg Stafford at each break, with the pair going through positioning and leading patterns.

As a sign of how low-key the contest was, taking place barely 12 hours after a nail biting classic between the Demons and Brisbane 44km away at the MCG, Stafford talked Grundy through his thoughts with one hand while using the other to hold the leash of his dog.

Just 30 people watched on at Casey, including Demons footy boss Alan Richardson and assistant coach Mark Wiliams, as Melbourne comfortably beat the Saints.

Melbourne is trying to reboot Brodie Grundy as a forward.

The match was staged as the VFL sides for both clubs had a weekend off and was staged with 15 men on the field for each side, and two Melbourne players swapped teams to play for St Kilda.

Young Demon Kade Chandler starred and proved he is ready to play a role in the senior side if needed, Michael Hibberd showed no signs of discomfort as he returns from a kidney injury and James Harmes worked hard through the midfield.

Most of the St Kilda football department was on the Gold Coast, with the Saints playing the Suns on Saturday afternoon, development coach Brendon Goddard worked the magnets for St Kilda, with injured forward Jack Billings a sounding board.

But all eyes were on Grundy.

He was often caught behind Highmore when Melbourne attacked and struggled to create separation.

While Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin flagged on Friday night that Grundy would play solely as a forward, he did attend four centre bounces.

The All-Australian ruck did his best work when roaming up the ground, shaking loose at one point in the third term to take a bounce and hit up forward Josh Shache for a goal.

After the game, Grundy refused to answer questions from a waiting group of journalists, as he rushed to his car and moved on.

He earlier told Channel 9: “As a professional, it’s my job. Looking forward to just giving it a red-hot crack to hopefully hit the scoreboard and run those patterns and have an impact.

“(Max Gawn) played really well last didn’t he in that role? It’s an exciting prospect and we have just got to get it right.

“It starts with me having a crack here today and seeing what I can do.”

Goodwin flagged that Grundy may spend multiple weeks outside of the senior side as he works on his forward craft and if so, he will remain off-broadway next weekend in the VFL when he plays at Coburg.

ANALYSIS: WHERE DOES GAWN DOMINANCE LEAVE GRUNDY?

If you can’t teach height, you definitely can’t teach speed.

Simon Goodwin and Max Gawn may remain wedded to the idea of Brodie Grundy lumbering around the forward line and the ruck, but in going to small ball on Friday night, Goodwin might have found a new formula for success.

The Demons planted their flag from the very start on Friday night against Brisbane, starting with Ben Brown in the goalsquare and Christian Petracca in the striker’s spot, 30m out from goal.

For almost the entirety of the night, Melbourne rotated Brown off the bench for Jacob Van Rooyen, an unusual strategy in the modern age of rotations, essentially cancelling out a spot on the bench from being used by a runner.

At the 10 minute mark of Friday’s game, it looked like a master stroke.

And by the end of the miracle one-point win, it still looked pretty good.

In an early avalanche, Melbourne kicked four goals before the Lions had even wrapped their heads around Jason Akermanis’ midweek breakdown of how the grass is different at the MCG compared to the Gabba.

Max Gawn willed the Demons to victory. Picture: Getty Images

After spending the year constantly pumping the ball in to tall forwards to diminishing returns of success, Melbourne targeted Alex Neal-Bullen, Jake Melksham and Petracca from their opening deep entries, leading to goals.

By removing Grundy from the mix, Goodwin subtracted a tall forward that not only struggles to put on pressure, but also naturally draws the eye of the kicker.

Instead, he sent Melksham to keep Lions interceptor Harris Andrews out of the action and backed in a Demon mosquito fleet.

For Melksham, who would later become the hero of the night by kicking the matchwinning goal, height isn’t everything.

“You can’t get too caught up in the height of players,” he said.

“It is just as hard to play on medium forwards and small forwards as it is tall forwards. You get different looks and the way that we play, we are quite dynamic as a forward group and we give different looks every time.

“You have to back your strengths. You can’t go too far away from what you are good at. I had a role on Harris Andrews but apart from that, we all just went to work and tried to deploy our forward craft.

“I thought it worked well, we are all getting good looks. We just have to execute.”

Melbourne did execute when it got the chance.

Starved for ball in the middle part of the game, the Demons booted 4.5 and put a couple of other shots into the stands in the finals quarter to pip the Lions at the post.

Those shots came from 18 final quarter inside-50s.

Christian Petracca was superb with four goals. Picture: Getty Images

In the second and third terms combined, Melbourne had just 21 forward entries.

When Goodwin’s small-ball group got its chance, it looked deadly, with Petracca again booting four goals to make it eight in his fortnight as a forward.

“It looked functional, certainly early in the game and late in the game,” Goodwin said.

“In that second and third quarter, I thought our entries were average. I thought Brisbane’s backs, to their credit, were dominating the game and we were having trouble getting the ball off them.

“It is still a work in progress for us but to kick 105 points against the third-placed team, we are doing something right.”

Melbourne had booted triple figures five times this season before Friday night, but only in a round 1 smashing of the Western Bulldogs had it done so against a side that will finish above the bottom six.

Other big totals had come this year against Sydney (134 points), West Coast (126), North Melbourne (139) and Hawthorn (103).

And since that Hawthorn win in round 9, Melbourne hadn’t so much as breached 80 points in a game.

Chris Fagan faces plenty of questions after another loss at the MCG. Picture: Getty Images

Much of those low scores had come thanks to missed opportunities, with Melbourne having booted 50 goals and 83 behinds in the dark days between round 10 and 16.

In the past fortnight, the Demons have kicked 28.16 as Mark Williams’ goalkicking school lessons pay off again.

The missed chances had been such an issue, that injured forward Tom McDonald told 3AW the Demons had been studying their expected score – a metric which gives a team a score based on what they should have kicked from their goalscoring opportunities - looking for answers.

“We can go through and we look at not necessarily the actual conversion but the expected score,” McDonald said.

“We are basing how we are judging ourselves on that and there was a game a few weeks ago where we were down because we were judging ourselves on that.”

For the record, Melbourne outshot its expected score by 26 points on Friday night.

THE GRUNDY QUESTION

Some Melbourne players were surprised when the weekly selection email lobbed in their inboxes this week.

Even after scanning the names, eyebrows were raised when there was no B.Grundy in the 22.

Goodwin was already sick of being asked about Clayton Oliver at every press conference in the last few weeks and now he is going to get tired of being peppered with questions about Grundy.

Gawn said post game he still thinks the ruck is a partnership between him and the ex-Magpie, while Goodwin said he hadn’t yet thought of entering finals without the big name recruit.

“I haven’t considered that,” he said.

“He is an important part of our footy club for not only the short term but the long term. He is a big part of us moving forward.”

Grundy took the news of his axing well and an hour before the game on Friday, he walked a lap on the MCG in his club tracksuit, kicking a footy.

What will the Demons do with Brodie Grundy? Picture: Getty Images

Not only did the forward line look better without Grundy, the skipper did too.

Gawn played his best game of 2023 by some way on Friday night as he steadily ran Oscar McInerney into the ground.

He posted season-highs in disposals (29, previous best: 21), contested possessions (21, previous best: 16), clearances (10, previous best: eight), hitouts (39, previous best: 35) and tackles (seven, previous best: five).

He also kicked his first goal since round 12.

Even Lions coach Chris Fagan labelled Gawn as “enormous”.

On those numbers, Grundy is going to have to show a heck of a lot of improvement in forward craft to break back into the team.

LIONS MCG WOES

With five minutes to go on Friday night, Fagan had all the answers.

His Lions had found a way through the Demons defence that few teams had before.

Melbourne had conceded 100 points just twice – in round 19, 2022 against the Western Bulldogs and against Essendon in Gather Round this year – in 82 matches since the start of 2020 until the Lions broke the Demons open.

But the fade out in the final minutes shows the Lions still have big steps to take to be a serious contender.

Brisbane just can’t get it done at the MCG, having won once there in 12 starts under Fagan.

It was around the ball that Fagan felt his side let it slip, having lost the contested possession count by 10 in the frantic opening quarter, and by 11 in the final quarter fadeout.

“We knew tonight that contested possession was going to be critical in terms of getting territory,” Fagan said.

“It comes down to that in a sense. We had enough inside-50s.

“If I was to lay the blame in one area it would be in the contest. They were better than us tonight and they got up and won by a point.”

Brisbane has all the weapons it needs to win the premiership – one Lions emergency watching on from the stands at the MCG shook his head at being forced out of the team and noted “there are a lot of good players in that forward line”.

But to win the flag, Brisbane is probably going to have to get better in the contest and is definitely going to have to win at the MCG.

The Lions let another winnable game slip at the MCG. Picture: Getty Images

MATCH REPORT: DEES MIRACLE WIN

Ronny Lerner

Melbourne have overturned a 28-point deficit to beat the Brisbane Lions by one point in one of the games of the season at the MCG on Friday night.

The Lions appeared to be cruising to victory when Joe Daniher put them up by 26 points early in the final term by kicking his second goal of the night.

However, Melbourne refused to give in, and when Jack Viney ripped the ball from Oscar McInerney’s grasp at the stoppage and booted it home from 20m out, he got the Demons back within five points with 2:12 to go.

And with 33 seconds to go, Jake Melksham was the hero as he took a spectacular pack mark from three deep, before slotting the set shot from 45m out to put the Demons back in front.

Jake Melksham came in clutch at the death. Picture: Getty Images

Melbourne survived one last scare on the final siren when Brisbane’s Eric Hipwood claimed a contested mark 50m out from goal, but the umpire rightly paid the grab to Jake Lever, sending the Melbourne faithful in attendance into delirium as they held on 16.9 (105) to 16.8 (104).

But Melbourne themselves let a sizeable lead slip too. After they booted the first four goals of the game inside eight minutes, to skip out to an early 25-point lead, the Lions took total control of the match.

Brisbane’s foot skills dramatically improved and they dominated the ball after turning the tide in the middle of the ground as Melbourne’s forward synergy started to fray.

The Lions’ advantage stretched out to a game-high 28 points in the third stanza after booting their second run of four consecutive goals, as they smashed the Demons in the territory battle.

The superior running capacity that Brisbane’s vaunted on-ball brigade displayed seemingly overwhelmed the Oliver-less Demons midfield.

However, the Demons had other ideas and they kicked the last four goals after the ball spent most of the time in their forward half in the final term.

In the end Melbourne smashed Brisbane in contested possessions (145-126) and clearances (45-32), despite missing Clayton Oliver against Brisbane’s stacked midfield group.

The loss means the Lions have now come up short in 14 of their last 15 matches at the MCG.