Tanking interviews show how Melbourne coaches, officials and players turned on each other

At first everyone held the line: Nobody was trying to lose games at Melbourne in 2009. But as the AFL’s tanking interviews went on, stories changed. And soon, they turned on each other.

“I can’t wait for the next rock to be lifted and there will be another story. He was just out of control.”

This was Dean Bailey’s scathing appraisal of his once close colleague Chris Connolly at Melbourne, in mid-November, 2012.

By this time, mud was flying in all directions over the Demons’ inglorious 2009 season.

It took a matter of weeks for the club’s united front to be smashed.

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In early August, 2012, when AFL investigators conducted their first round of interviews on the Dees tanking scandal, all players and staff insisted they had never heard of any orders to lose.

Brock McLean — who had sparked the probe with his explosive comments on Fox Footy a month earlier — was first up, saying he had simply speculated on whether coach Dean Bailey was “put in an uncomfortable position”.

“I didn’t feel like they were going out there and deliberately trying to lose,” McLean said.

“They were putting development ahead of winning a game of footy, which can be important to a club in terms of rebuilding and getting players’ experience and stuff like that. But for me, I was 24, 25 at the time — I can’t, yeah 24 I think — and I was past that stage. I wanted to engage in footy.”

Brock McLean was the first to speak out about the tanking claims.

Dean Bailey would tell investigators his job was threatened.

Assistant coach Mark Williams struggled to even remember how many games Melbourne had won, saying: “From my recollection I think we had a fair few injuries in 2009 season. I can’t remember how many games we won, must have been five or four. Four. And I reckon our brief was to, as I said, to play as many young kids as we could and so, to develop them as well as we could, and build as much flexibility into them as we possibly could as well.”

Bailey initially insisted the club was just in a “development phase”, observing: “Well, development was a priority for us and if we won then that’s great.”

He added: “I was never directly told to lose the game.

“I can’t recall that conversation happening where they said don’t win more than four because if you win more than four we’ll sack you, that sort of thing, no.”

Demons officials Josh Mahoney, David Dunbar, Barry Prendergast, Kelly O’Donnell and Paul Johnson, among others, agreed.

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Connolly went into exhaustive detail about the club’s strategies for fast-tracking young players’ development, getting the “balancing act” of being competitive and developing talent right.

Chief executive Cameron Schwab described it as a “full list rebuild”.

But the investigators were pushing hard and cracks were appearing.

Admitting that Connolly and Schwab were “fairly strong on the direction of the club”, Bailey sarcastically added: “They were coaches those two, the best coaches in the world … some of the greatest football minds in the world those two.”

On August 10, assistant coach Sean Wellman, now an Essendon director, was asked by investigator Brett Clothier: “Did you ever see anything or hear anything that made you think there might have been someone placing pressure on Dean to not win matches?”

“Yep,” came the reply.

“Probably just a feeling I got around the place, yeah,” he added.

Read the tanking story we broke in 2012 that the AFL dismissed:

‘EIGHT CHANGES, WE’LL BE RIGHT’

Dean Bailey described Chris Connolly as “out of control”, influencing decisions and telling him what to do.

Next, club doctor Andrew Daff observed that during the Round 18 Richmond game, which Melbourne ultimately lost: “I think the coach looked disappointed even though we were in front.”

Clothier was unrelenting. “You gotta think about which side you want to be on,” he warned in a September 7 interview with fitness coach Joel Hocking.

“The only thing I remember is Connolls getting up there saying that people’s jobs were on the line,” Hocking said.

The dam wall had broken.

Asked what the message being sent to the coaches was, Wellman said in his second interview on September 21: “It was pretty clear … we only wanted to win a certain amount of games so we can get a priority pick. I can remember him (Bailey) fairly agitated.”

Then came the flood.

Ian Flack expanded: “He mentioned, um, you know, there’s a lot of influential people at the club and, um, yeah, and you said before everyone’s job was on the line if we didn’t make it happen.”

Clothier asked: “Chris was giving a direction that the club wasn’t to win more than four games for the year?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Flack replied.

In his third interview, in October, Williams remembered being “really p---ed off” over the direction.

At the end of the month, Prendergast expanded: “My recollection of it was the message, and so discussion, there has to be more than one person to have the discussion.”

Melbourne’s 2009 coaching staff.

By November, Williams was in “no doubt” that Bailey’s job was on the line if the club did not get the priority pick.

Many of Bailey’s staff were in no doubt who was to blame.

“Nothing in Bails’ make-up that would want him to do, would drive him to do what he was asked to do,” Williams said.

“And I know that a lot of time when Connolls came into the meetings he’d say something and then we’d look at each other and, oh yeah right, and just go on with what we were doing.”

Bailey, when he finally unloaded, was raging about Connolly and Schwab.

“I would have thought he (Connolly) would have said something like useless c---s, they don’t know what they are doing,” Bailey said in one reference to his boss.

“Those rotations would have pleased him.”

He added: “Once I was threatened, I know I sound ad nauseam, the thing I focused on for the two years I was there, your line of questioning, was I was appeasing Chris in what he wanted.”

When Bailey was told that Connolly denied claims he had been on the bench during matches, the coach responded: “That is a lie, I am sure you could find vision of him sitting on the bench, there might be vision of him telling runners what to do as well.”

Told that Connolly had claimed he had “no hands on team selection … never interfered with the coaching”, an angry Bailey quipped: “Sounds like he was never there.”

Former Melbourne CEO Cameron Schwab.

“He would come in and out of match committee often, he would give 10 mins of his best, why play him there, you can’t play him there, that’s ridiculous, he should be playing here, he should be playing on him, what are you doing? He would do that for 10 mins, walk out, then pop his head back in again. Post game reviews, did he say he wasn’t in those as well?

“I can’t wait for the next rock to be lifted and there will be another story. I just had no idea. He was just out of control.

“He would do things on a whim, he couldn’t help himself, like I said to you.

“I have no doubt that in my mind he was on the bench. And he was influencing people, and he was influencing rotations, for all I know, he might have been sending messages out for all I know.

“Now the investigation is going on, people are saying I remember him doing this, I don’t remember that. That was who he was. He wanted a statue built. How he saved the Melbourne footy club.

“He was just adamant that: one, he thought I couldn’t coach and, two, he knew the prospect of being threatened, you almost say go f--- yourself, I am not doing it. You go, go f--- yourself. Threatening people who have busted their arse. I have no doubt he reckons none of us were any good, so he thought f--- it, I will do it.

“He will go and make sure the Melbourne footy club is looked after. And he would be the one who will get the credit for it. Behind the scenes he was creating chaos everywhere.

“I don’t know whether he had influence on the coaches, because he was a f---wit at times.

“There is no doubt he had influence over the bench.

“Chris’s personality, he would have told Cameron what he was doing. He would have told people at the club. He wants people to know he is doing it. I am sure he would have told Cameron. Cameron would have said, like hands off, he would deny Chris speaking to him.

“I know this going back to Fremantle, but in our first year when we trusted each other, Chris used to ring Cameron all the time. And Cameron couldn’t get Chris, so Cameron gave him a phone so only Cameron could talk to him.

“He is a talker … Chris would ring him often … His communication to Cameron was often during the day. No, they were as thick as thieves those two.”

Connolly, in the end, couldn’t hide his contempt for Bailey, either.

Denying the allegations against him, Connolly hit back saying: “Dean Bailey in the end, tried to get me sacked from Melbourne Football Club.

“Dean Bailey went to the board and said that I’ve got to be moved on as manager. There was leaks going to the media left right and centre. I was getting lined up full time and Dean was heavily involved in that.”

Schwab, too, was outraged against suggestions of wrongdoing.

Told of Bailey’s claims that he was unhappy after the Port Adelaide win, he responded: “Crap, I’m hurt and offended.”