Jack Viney, Tom McDonald and Max Gawn on the bad times at Melbourne and how things turned
JACK Viney didn’t know what had hit him. The Dees had just been belted in his second game and players were in tears. But this wasn’t even Melbourne’s lowest moment. JON RALPH looks at the rock bottom and turning points for the Dees.
Melbourne
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JACK Viney didn’t know what had hit him.
A lifetime spent dreaming about following in his father Todd’s footsteps had turned into a living nightmare just two games into his AFL career.
It was April 2013 and Melbourne’s newest great white hope walked off the MCG reeling at what had just unfolded.
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He had only made his debut the previous week and yet Mark Neeld’s Demons were in free fall.
They had lost to Essendon by 148 points, yet another dramatic low for a team that only two years before had succumbed by 186 points to Geelong.
His team had been booed off the MCG and his teammates were on the brink of tears in the changerooms.
As Viney told the Herald Sun of that seismic defeat this week: “It reduced grown men to tears”.
This week three of Melbourne’s senior players recounted what they felt was rock bottom as well as a symbolic turning point for a club that has also lost Jim Stynes, Troy Broadbridge, Sean Wight, Robbie Flower and Dean Bailey along the way.
JACK VINEY
ROCK BOTTOM
“What really sticks in my head was my second game when we lost by 150 points to Essendon. And walking back through the race we had supporters throwing scarfs at us,’’ he said.
“Walking into the changerooms you had players pretty much in tears. For me that was a big eye opener to where the club was at the time.”
Melbourne would concede 44 scoring shots to Essendon that day, with Neeld’s tenure lasting only nine more weeks.
In all during 2013, the Demons would lose eight games by 79 points or more, winning two games and finishing the season with a percentage of 54.07.
“It reduced grown men to tears. You don’t wish that on anyone,” Viney said.
“These are the people you work with every single day. To see people distraught leaves a lasting impression on me.
TURNING POINT
“I can’t identify a single turning point, it’s been a process and journey over many years,” he said.
“There hasn’t been a single line-in-the-sand moment. I have always seen the good in us, I have always been optimistic about this footy club even when others weren’t.”
TOM MCDONALD
ROCK BOTTOM
“The Essendon loss was as bad as I can remember being involved in. It was a home game and our fans didn’t even want to be there,” McDonald said.
“Me and Gawny were both carry-overs to the 186 point loss (in 2011).
“The VFL lost by about 130 points and we thought we were a chance to play because Brent Moloney was sick in the warm-up. He ended up playing and didn’t have a touch and was subbed off at half time.
“In hindsight it was good we didn’t get the chance to play. It would have been the first career game for both of us.”
That week was as dramatic as any in Melbourne history, with captain Brad Green’s hint in an On The Couch interview that all was not well leading to a series of administration-player meetings about the senior core’s issues with CEO Cameron Schwab.
Much-loved coach Dean Bailey was on the verge of a contract extension, but the scope of the massacre was so considerable by the next week Bailey was sacked and Schwab extended to attempt to show some stability.
“I remember sitting in the stands behind the goals thinking this can’t keep going,’’ McDonald said of the loss.
“When a team leads by 40 points in the first quarter, you thought we would peg it back.
And then when it’s 100 at half time and it just keeps going and going, it’s like what do we do?
“I was only 18 at the time so I had no idea what was happening with Schwabby and Bailey and I just thought I would turn up at training but the newspaper (journos) and cameras out the front (after Bailey was sacked instead of Schwab) made it a different week.”
TURNING POINT
“We beat Hawthorn in Roosy’s last year, in Round 16 2016. We didn’t win many games with Roosy but things were changing in the background. If you need an external turning point, that win came when they were one of the better sides in the competition and that was our ninth win of the year. This year the turning point was beating West Coast and we haven’t looked back since then.”
MAX GAWN
ROCK BOTTOM
“Against GWS in Round 4, 2013 it was my first game back into the team after we had been walloped by Essendon in Round 2.
“At three quarter time we were 40 points down against GWS and Mark Neeld was getting booed as we walked up the race.
“The boys got together and said, ‘Just listen to what they are saying about our coach in the stands’.
“It was one of the better moments that we could turn it around, (kicking 12 last-term goals) but at three quarter time it felt like rock bottom.
“There was a game against Fremantle where we had 20 inside 50s to their 90 and we played almost five men behind the ball and that was an incredibly hard day for the whole club.
“Obviously the two big slashings against Essendon and Geelong, you can’t go past them.”
TURNING POINT
“It has been a gradual process. For me, everyone says the Geelong game when I went down there and played a good game (with 44 hitouts,19 disposals, one goal in Round 12, 2015), but I played a really good game in the VFL against Richmond a few weeks before. It was my last ever VFL game and they basically told me you better do something today, pull your finger out. I had been dropped six times.
“From there I have played every game in the AFL so that was the turning point.”
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