AFL 2021: Go inside the Melbourne Demons past players WhatsApp group
A Demons player’s WhatsApp group has erupted as Melbourne head into their first Grand Final in 21 years. See their messages of inspiration here.
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An online chat group featuring more than 130 former Melbourne footballers is sending upwards of 50 messages a day ahead of the club’s first grand final in 21 years.
Named “Past Players MFC”, the WhatsApp thread was formed by 134-game ex-Demon Rod Grinter on September 13 – three days after the club’s preliminary final thrashing of Geelong.
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The group started when Melbourne media manager Matthew Goodrope asked Grinter, the club’s Past Players and Officials Association chairman, to get former Demons to send minute-long well wishing videos for the squad to watch this week before Saturday’s game in Perth.
Among the 137 ex-Demons in the thread are Team of the Century member Garry Lyon, mercurial forward Jeff Farmer, Brownlow medallist Shane Woewodin, former NFL punter Darren Bennett, spearhead David Schwarz, cult figure Allen Jakovich, No. 1 draft picks Jack Watts and Jeff White, as well as past captains David Neitz, Cameron Bruce, Todd Viney, Brad Green, Greg Healy, James McDonald and Jack Grimes.
There are also less familiar names such as Stephen Bickford (15 matches from 1980-81), Sam Blease (33, 2011-14), Billy Stretch (47, 2015-19) and Jay Viney (23, 1988-1991).
Grinter, who played for Melbourne from 1985-1994, told News Corp the chat group was desperate for the club to end its 57-year premiership drought by beating the Western Bulldogs.
“This (WhatsApp group) is just avenue to connect with our past teammates,” Grinter said.
“Thanks to our current-day boys, what they’ve been able to do this year has created that excitement and pride in being a Melbourne supporter.
“In 57 years, we’ve had a couple of goes at it in ‘88 and 2000, but the last 21 years we’ve just been really, really bad.
“To be walking around proudly with our Melbourne scarfs on or beanies or jackets, it’s a pleasure to be a past player.”
Grinter used his phone contacts to invite Demons from a range of eras into the group, then launched it with a spiel asking if anyone wanted to send the club a short video message.
“Everyone started to post a few little comments, then all of a sudden we’re getting photos from when we’re on footy trips, lots of little stories, remember this, then someone will say ‘can you add this bloke?’”.
When new members join, they are welcomed by a photo of them from their debut season, usually sourced by former Melbourne player and Fremantle coach Chris Connolly.
Connolly has been the most prolific on the thread, kicking off each day with a series of often amusing photos.
“It’s been remarkable, the connection from people who have just lost touch,” Grinter said.
“It’s been super, so good.”
Grinter deliberately left Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge, who played 42 games for the Demons from 1989-1992, out of the group
“Bevo obviously would’ve been in there if he wasn’t coaching on Saturday,” he said.
“But there’s been lots of photos of Bevo on pre-season camps and footy trips from boys that he played with.”
On Tuesday, the thread had more than 50 messages for the day by 12.45pm.
It started with a happy birthday shoutout from Grinter to former teammate Graeme Yeats at 5.47am: “Happy birthday Yater, may Saturday night you receive the best present ever”.
There was a poignant turn a short time later when a video from Peggy Wight, the Dublin-based mother of ex-Demons defender Sean Wight, was posted.
Wight died 10 years ago after a short battle with lung cancer.
“Sean’s mum’s video was about how excited she is and how excited Sean would be,” Grinter said.
“It’s quite emotional – Sean’s my age and he died way too young.”
Referring to the likes of Jim Stynes, Robbie Flower, Troy Broadbridge, Dean Bailey, Steven Clark and Colin Sylvia, Grinter then added: “Too many Melbourne-connected people have died way too young.”
“They’re part of our history, so for us that have known those guys and played with them, all we can do is hope and we pray we can do the job on Saturday and know these guys will be looking down on the team very proudly if we can get the holy grail,” he said.
Grinter planned to start grand final discussions in the chat group from Wednesday.
“I’ll ask who do you think’s going to do what, who’s going to play on who, everyone’s thoughts on the game,” he said.
Grinter will catch up in Melbourne before the game in with a contingent of ex-Demons who jog the Tan at 6.45am each Saturday.
Clint Bizzell and Neitz started the running crew about eight years ago and weekly sessions conclude with breakfast and coffee.
“We’ll do a toast to our team and then we’ll go home and be sitting in anticipation for the big game that night and be watching with our families,” Grinter said.
Grinter was looking forward to getting past players together in a more formal setting once restrictions allowed – hopefully to celebrate a drought-breaking premiership.
In the meantime, he expected to receive plenty of WhatsApp notifications.
“Touch wood we do the job, we win the game, and there’ll be videos going of lounge rooms and everyone jumping up and going berserk, a bit like Ollie Wines’s siblings (after his Brownlow Medal win).”
Dee-tour: How the AFL season was saved
When the AFL season looked like becoming grounded it placed a long-distance telephone call to the sky.
A charter flight was carrying Melbourne straight into Queensland’s snap lockdown at 1000km/hr along the eastern seaboard.
The league wanted to know how much juice this Boeing 737-800 had left and so Head of Procurement Michael Thorn dialled the cockpit directly.
“You learn a lot of things during Covid that you didn’t know existed — you can actually give the pilot a call,” fixture boss Travis Auld told News Corp.
“We were having conversations with the crew on the flight about have you got enough fuel to go straight to Perth?
“Because at one stage we thought that might be the right option.
“We were all trying to work through them to say, ‘Give us a sense of what distance you could fly’, because we want to get a better idea of what our options are.
“At one stage there was talk of stopping in NSW to refuel to get to Perth.
“We were literally having a live conversation with the pilots and the crew as to what we might do with that aircraft, given it was a charter flight.”
Queensland’s shutters were going up at 4pm after the detection of six Delta cases in the southeast on July 31.
Essendon, Gold Coast, Sydney and Greater Western Sydney were all based in that region.
They required an emergency evacuation as the clock ticked down to lockdown.
A mid-air Melbourne was scheduled to join them at 11.07am while the Lions were sitting idle on the Brisbane Airport tarmac.
Round 20 looked doomed with three games in Queensland scrapped and six clubs at risk of getting roped into a harsh lock down.
But the AFL’s Return to Play group — featuring top brass Andrew Dillon, Robert Auld and Travis Auld, as well as broadcasting and scheduling boss Marcus King and Covid compliance officers Madeline Penny Josh Bowler — connected on a 9.30am conference call coloured with creativity.
“Clearly, Gill gets briefed to make sure 1) he’s across it and 2) he agrees with our plan,” Auld said.
As the blissfully unaware Dees relaxed in the clouds above Wagga Wagga, the return to play posse was already workshopping ways to shelter clubs from the latest Covid storm.
Communication then flows to clubs, broadcasters, venues, state governments and the AFL Players’ Association.
“It was quite incredible,” King, a rising star inside AFL House, said.
“I remember walking down to get a coffee on Saturday morning and Trav gave me a call, and getting a call from Trav on Saturday morning is rarely a good thing — and it wasn’t that day.
“Trav had got a heads-up just that things were starting to unravel a bit in Queensland and we had to make some very quick decisions, clearly.
“You had Melbourne in the air to play Gold Coast. Originally they were playing Gold Coast in the afternoon and then travelling on to Perth, and so we had to make decisions about not only what do we do for that game immediately, but also what do we do with Melbourne?”
The AFL had secured clearance from both Queensland and Tasmania governments for the Lions to depart and moved quickly to evacuate the Bombers, Suns, Swans and Giants out of Queensland and into Melbourne, even if some hit the sky after 4pm.
Thorn has spent hundreds of hours on the phone to Virgin and Accor Hotels as the man behind every AFL booking this pandemic.
But on July 31, 2021 it became obvious why some colleagues refer to him as Thorn Air.
“Michael Thorn has been unbelievable for the last two years,” Auld said.
“But that day was his Grand Final in a way, to be able to source planes and get teams down.”
More than 200 charter flights were booked across AFL and AFLW this year.
“There were times in the season where being able to access a charter flight was really hard, because there’s a whole lot of normal flights going on and planes are being used,” King said.
“It was the same with hotels. But that became a really relevant factor in the fixturing — there’s no point us going off and doing a fixture if we can’t actually fly a team to where we’re proposing them to play.”
The AFL pushed out more than 60 different fixture releases this year as 18 rounds were altered from the original version, while only two AFLW rounds remained untouched.
“It was costing us at one stage over $4-5 million a week, at times $6 million a week, to run the competition,” Auld said.
“That’s a combination of charter flights, exclusive hotels with teams coming in quarantine environments, having quite a number of teams on the road and then a fairly extensive Covid regimen.”
But it was Round 20 which proved the most problematic, which was headlined by those Dee-touring — and then U-turning — Demons.
They clocked more than 2500km without travelling anywhere after having their plane turned around on the Brisbane tarmac.
Christian Petracca crept into the cockpit during the three hours they spent on the ground while Kayo’s broadcast of Casey-Footscray — Nathan Jones kicked a goal and had 29 — must’ve enjoyed a ratings boost as his AFL teammates tuned in.
When the flight attendant assumed Max Gawn, seated in the first row, was “in charge of the party” it was the captain called to the front of the plane to relay information from the other captain on-board.
“The mixed messages we were getting … every five minutes it was a different story,” Dees assistant Adem Yze told News Corp.
“We got told we might be landing in Brisbane and playing Gold Coast at the Gabba and then the game was cancelled to playing it post-round 23.”
But Gawn had good mail as the AFL considered all options.
“Can we actually still play Round 20, or do we have to bite bullet, force the bye, focus on Round 21 and make them up at the end?” King said.
“That was a pretty live conversation for us. There was a scenario where Melbourne, on the way to Queensland, might still go to Perth and we forgo the Gold Coast game for the moment and instead just make sure they get to Perth to be able to play the Eagles the next week.”
How’s this for a warped itinerary?
Players arrived at Melbourne’s jet base at 8am, departed for Gold Coast at 9.19am, instead landed at Brisbane at 11.07am, departed Brisbane at 2.05pm and touched down on the same tarmac they started on at 4.18pm.
But what happened next shows why these Demons are premiership favourites.
Gawn and the leaders organised an impromptu captain’s run at AAMI Park to stay sharp the night before crushing the Suns by 98 points.
Fitness boss Darren Burgess didn’t mark it as compulsory but almost everyone attended.
Then again, look at the crazy quarantine hurdles Grand Final opponent Western Bulldogs have overcome this finals series.
“A club like the Bulldogs, as much as they haven’t been able to get everything that they want, have been extraordinary in terms of their resilience and willingness to knuckle down and do what they had to do,” Auld said.
“In some ways, from talking to the club, they’ve almost used that as a bit of a mantra leading into the finals.
“They’re going to be the team that’s prepared to do whatever it takes to make it to that last day.”
Will next season be back to normal for the brains behind the games?
“We’ve made a decision for AFLW that we feel to give that competition the best chance to get a good run at an uninterrupted season we’ve pushed it back,” Auld said.”
But I think we’re all optimistic things will improve.
“I don’t think they’ll be like 2019 and so we need to be equipped and prepared to have the same mindset.”
Other helpers from league headquarters include Jude Donnelly (head of government), David Stevenson and Tom Gastin (footy ops) and media managers Jay Allen and Nadine Rabah.
So, which pandemic season required more doses of Panadol?
“We were somewhat match-fit from last year,” King said.
“Last year had its own challenges in a fixturing sense when we were doing compression fixturing and those sorts of things.
“Having so many teams in one place in Queensland with venues there were those sorts of challenges that were pretty tough at the time.
“(But) overhaul more uncertainty this year made it harder.”
MELBOURNE’S HELLISH ITINERARY
8am – Players arrive at Melbourne Jet Base
9.19am – Melbourne departs bound for Gold Coast
11.07am – Melbourne rerouted in air and lands in Brisbane
2.05pm – Melbourne departs Brisbane after almost three hours on tarmac
4.18pm – Melbourne lands back where they were told to arrive at 8am
Evening – Max Gawn’s impromptu captain’s run the night before rescheduled game against Gold Coast.
THE AFL’s RETURN TO PLAY GROUP
Andrew Dillon
Robert Auld
Travis Auld
Marcus King
Madeline Penny
Josh Bowler
OTHER LEAGUE STAFF CHIPPING IN
Jude Donnelly
David Stevenson
Tom Gastin
Jay Allen
Nadine Rabah
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