Melbourne wins inside 50 count 73-48, but get demolished by Geelong

Send out the search and rescue squad — Melbourne’s scoring power has officially gone missing. And one remarkable stat from tonight’s horrific loss to Geelong shows the full extent of the Demons’ woe.

Max Gawn bounced back from a poor Round 1, but the Demons could not split the big sticks. Picture: AAP

Send out the search and rescue squad — Melbourne’s scoring power has officially gone missing.

It’s all very well having the best midfield in the competition, but it’s not much use if you can’t put that advantage on the scoreboard at the attacking end.

And, right now, the Demons are struggling to do that.

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Max Gawn bounced back from a poor Round 1, but the Demons could not split the big sticks. Picture: AAP

Melbourne was the highest scoring team in the competition during the home-and-away season last year, averaging 105 points a game.

The Demons kicked a total of 156 more points across the season than the next best side, Richmond.

Since then, they have played three finals and two home-and-away matches this season, averaging just 68 points from those five matches.

They have kicked more than 10 goals just once from those five outings.

Last night against Geelong, the team in red and blue managed just three goals in the first half and went 37 minutes without kicking a major between the 15-minute-mark of the first term and the 19-minute-mark of the second term.

It got worse.

Simon Goodwin’s side generated nine consecutive inside-50s to start the third quarter against Geelong last night and were left goalless from them before the Cats capitalised on a turnover and Luke Dahlhaus kicked a goal at the other end from a single inside-50 entry.

In the end, it was 73 inside-50s for a measly six goals for Melbourne while Geelong booted 20 goals from just 48 entries.

The troubles came after 45 inside-50s resulted in just nine goals for Melbourne in Round 1 and 53 inside-50s amounted to just seven goals in the preliminary final against West Coast last year.

From their last five games, Tom McDonald has kicked six goals, Sam Weideman has kicked seven, Jake Melksham has eight goals and Christian Petracca has kicked just two goals.

All this has been without Jesse Hogan, who missed finals last year after booting 47 goals from 20 games last season before departing for Fremantle during the trade period.

The Demons were left smarting after the match. Picture: Michael Klein

There is a clear disconnect at the moment — and it needs to be resolved, quickly.

Goodwin says his players are “hurting” and a 0-2 start to the season is “not acceptable” but believes there were positive signs of improvement in the loss

“From last week to this week, we had a lot more players playing better,” Goodwin said.

“But we need to connect better.

“(We need to) move the ball in a way that will connect best to maximise the entries. Ultimately they maximised all theirs. They kicked 20.6. We needed to do that better as a club. That’s 126 points off 48 entries, that’s a lot. So we need to fix that up pretty quickly.”

Goodwin said his side would continue to build ahead of a crunch game with fellow 0-2 side Essendon on Friday night.

“The scoreboard for us looks terrible, and it should,” Goodwin said.

“We are hurting as players and as a club, to lose by 80 points is not the way that you want to be.

“But there are things that are starting to head in the right direction.”