How Melbourne’s match-day strategy changed after third win of 2009 season

As Melbourne claimed its third win of the 2009 season, not everyone at the club was cheering. Then seemingly fit players were rested, and rotations stymied. Now what club figures claim was really happening on match days can finally be revealed.

A hardcore tribe of Demons faithful braved the winter chill at the MCG and believed their stuttering club might just have turned the corner.

It was July 12, 2009, and a late goal to Ricky Petterd helped seal Melbourne’s Round 15 victory over Port Adelaide — their third of the season and second in succession.

But amid a raucous rendition of “It’s a Grand Old Flag”, there were murmurs of discontent.

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“There was no question I wanted to win (but) I remember Schwaby walking in and puts his head down,” coach Dean Bailey told AFL investigators just over three years later.

“I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something like ‘F---ing Jesus, Gee’, you know, shaking his head.

“I thought we are OK, we won. He mumbled something about difficult, hard, what we’re doing to get to the end of the year, gotta think of the club’s future, something to those, words to that effect.”

There wasn’t much for Dees fans to cheer about in 2009, but even the wins weren’t cause for celebration.

Schwaby — the club chief executive Cameron Schwab — was not alone in his consternation, according to evidence given by Bailey.

He continued: “I can’t remember the words. Chris (Connolly) said something to me about ‘F---ing Jimmy (Stynes) had just fallen out of his bloody hospital bed’ or something.

“Oh right, I just ignored Chris to be honest.”

ROTATIONS, INJURIES AND ORDERS FROM THE BENCH

But Bailey did not ignore his bosses.

Transcripts of the Melbourne tanking interviews reveal the coach agreed that he would ramp up the development of his squad after the Round 15 win.

“Our player movement or whatever you want to call it, there was more opportunity given to players during that period than in the first 12 weeks,” Bailey said in his November 2012 interview with league investigators Brett Clothier and Abraham Haddad.

“I was threatened and from the threat we moved the players around more, absolutely,” Bailey said.

Despite the AFL investigation into the saga concluding that there was no “match-day” foul-play, the secret tanking files reveal that Bailey told investigators that interchange rotations were also stymied.

“Chris (Connolly) was very controlling during that period, of blokes on the bench. I’ve got no doubt about that,” Bailey claimed.
“And when he rang a couple of times upstairs to say they were f---ed, they can’t come back on, I found that a bit odd, because the doctor would say give me 5min, I am going to give an injection or walk downstairs underneath, to either manipulate, physio, or they do hips or ankles or calves. Calves are ones where they normally test, normally calves can take 5-10min, but it was very much no they’re not going back on, they’re done, they’re done for the day, and I reckon that was the explanation for the low rotations.

“(Stefan) Steffy Martin, I remember one game Chris saying he can’t come back on, I can’t remember what was wrong with him. But it wasn’t. It was something he said was wrong with him. I just took it. After the game, or during the week, he didn’t show any signs.

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Stefan Martin in a marking contest against Carlton.

“I can’t remember the injury, he might have had a cork, a bad cork, but Chris said he can’t go back on, and I can’t remember what he said, he might have said he has done a thigh and he can’t go back on, so I said OK, he can’t go back on, he has a thigh. But during the week, Steffy was able to train or do something.

“Now I can’t remember all of them, but I reckon he was one. There would have been a couple of others that would have had injuries that they might have been able to play with, but on reflection the doc would say something, I can’t remember the doc saying anything. I don’t think. Chris was in control.”

Asked whether reducing rotations would undermine the team, Bailey said: “It would, as the game wore on. If you are rotating, if our rotations were OK the first half, I couldn’t tell you, but if you got less, if you have more rotations in the first half, and they dropped away in the second half, and dropped away in the last quarter then that would have an effect on the speed of the players and the speed of the game. You have to change what you do, slow the ball down so you could get a rest on the ground for a couple of minutes, so they could get a breather.”

Investigator Clothier then asked: “So when you say you were doing the rotations, leaving them on the ground longer, to develop them, you are also aware that the players would not be at their optimum. So was this another thing that you thought would satisfy Connolly and Schwab.”

Bailey responded: “Well, Chris was in control, so he was satisfying himself.”

THE RICHMOND, CARLTON AND FREO GAMES

Another focus of the investigation was Melbourne’s four-point loss to Richmond in Round 18.

“I know (in the) Richmond game, CEOs in the box asking questions. It was pretty obvious. “There was a lot of pressure on that day,” personal development coach Ian Flack said.

Bailey was also quizzed about the unavailability of injured players in the Round 21 loss to Carlton at the MCG and whether there was “a deliberate attempt, in this particular match to hobble the team, to such an extent that it can’t win the Carlton game, because this is the game that will throw you into the five wins”.

Bailey answered: “I am looking at that wondering why we didn’t put them through as rested.

“But from a Carlton game point of view we didn’t play that bad, to be honest.”

Asked by Haddad whether Melbourne would have been stronger if it had played Lynden Dunn, Nathan Jones and Brad Miller in that game, Bailey said: “Yeah, I reckon we would have.”

Spent players Ricky Petterd and Paul Johnson as the siren sounds on the Richmond game.

At one point, Clothier said to assistant coach Josh Mahoney: “Dean’s admitted to a couple of things … One of the things he admitted to was some players were rested, they weren’t injured, they weren’t an emergency, they just, were given a week, a week of rest.”

Haddad pointed out how in an unlosable Round 20 clash at home against struggling Fremantle, Melbourne had 99 interchange rotations.

But he observed that in Round 21 against Carlton, a game Haddad said to Bailey “would tip you over the edge to win number five … we have all these people taken out who are apparently fairly good players, but (club medico) Dr (Andrew) Daff says they were rested.”

Haddad asked: “No reason why they couldn’t play? But they are injured here. So when we got to Round 21, the rotations dropped back, either we have no one who we can be put back on the field, or it is a deliberate attempt to hobble the team, you understand?”

Bailey replied: “I understand we would have dropped them or omitted them and the report has gone in.”

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At another stage he said: “We certainly rested and omitted players, dropped them and gave other players the chance.”

“They (Schwab and Connolly) could see that with blokes getting rested, and the blokes coming in they could see — he is doing as he has been threatened — but in the game, as the game evolved, I am hoping they play well, and I hope they do as well as they can, that was the chicken and the egg as far as I was concerned, that’s the compromised situation.”

On the broader strategy after Round 15, Bailey said: “We had three or four blokes who were on our list who needed to get played and we didn’t know whether they were going to be any good, to be honest.

“And we played them in the last three to four weeks, four to five weeks, over the last three to four games I think, at the expense of one of the blokes who got rested.”

Asked whether those rested included Nathan Jones, Bailey said: “Yeah … to use Nathan Jones as an example, a young bloke like Shane Valenti.

“Ah, Jordan McKenzie, I think he played 2009. They got chances to play. They were young. So we played (them) at the expense of Jonesy (Nathan Jones). That is one example.

“Tom McNamara. I can’t remember how many games Tom played, he played a couple of games. We were making decisions on his career to see whether he was going to stick on the list or not.

“The last game of the year (a 47-point loss to St Kilda), I remember because (Matthew) Whelan and (Paul) Wheatley retired. I can’t remember how many games Wheels played. He needed three to get to 150, so we played him, just to get him to 150.

“Wheatley played the last two games. Maybe that was his last game, so players had to make way for those two to play, so that’s what we did.”