Robbo: Melbourne was right to get tough and trade ‘soft’ fan favourite Jack Watts
EMOTIONAL Melbourne fans are asking ‘how could you trade our golden boy? and blaming Simon Goodwin for the departure of Jack Watts. They shouldn’t, writes MARK ROBINSON
Melbourne
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GLEN Bartlett knows all about tough decisions made at footy clubs.
In 1987, he signed a three-year deal to play with West Coast and was cut after just one season. “It’s a hard game,” he says.
Now the Melbourne president, he looks at the Jack Watts trade and says: “Jack’s given the club nine years’ service, given fans some good memories, but that’s footy and we move on.”
“We wish him all best, but we’re about focusing forward and building a really strong group, a strong culture and we’ll make hard decisions and right decisions.
“It was a hard decision that was made.’’
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There’s a portion of Melbourne fans furious with the club over the Watts trade.
How could you trade the Golden Boy? Our No.1?
He was shipped to Port Adelaide for pick No.31 and the club was inundated with complaints, via emails and telephone calls, some teary, although the stream of abuse has become a trickle.
There’s no doubting there was footy love for Jack. Likeable, gracious, courteous and mostly always smiling, there was soft spot for Watts inside and outside the club.
But that soft spot became untenable.
Under Bartlett and first with Paul Roos as coach and now Simon Goodwin, soft is not a word to be associated with the Melbourne Football Club.
In terms of Watts, it was sometimes soft in preparation and application, soft in defensive capabilities and soft in taking responsibility.
Even his welcome interview at Port Adelaide late last week allowed us into his mindset, adding to the accusation he was a talented player along for the ride and not one to desperately, absolutely and repeatedly want everything out of his footy.
“I am not expected to play as that big, key forward (at Port) which is what I struggled a little bit with during my time at Melbourne, where I had to play as that big key,” Watts said.
He added: “I am joining a football club that has a supportive, caring environment ... and a fierce desire to win. Where I am in my career, they are the two things I am looking for.”
Hope he’s not saying he didn’t get that “supportive, caring environment” at the Demons.
Emotional Melbourne fans shouldn’t berate their club as they have done.
A nice team could’ve kept a nice bloke and everyone could’ve lived happily ever after. But football isn’t wonderland and fairytales. It’s about winning flags.
Former Melbourne captain Garry Lyon said last week it would’ve been easy, popular and safe to keep Watts, but he also asked: Does that help deliver premierships?
The seeds of doubt about Watt’s future came on the eve of the Round 21 match against St Kilda, a match Watts was dropped for.
After eight years and 14 games, it was the kind of match the Demons had been building and caressing Watts to deliver in, but Goodwin didn’t go with him.
Trust was gone and it was the start of the end for the former No.1.
Truth be told, Watts had five coaching regimes at Melbourne and none was able to extract from Watts what mostly everyone believes is in him.
Maybe all five groups couldn’t coach — and there would be argument for some of them — but just maybe Watts also has to take responsibility for his own footy.
Despite Roos saying recently he wouldn’t trade Watts, club insiders say Watts was entertained as a trade option at the end of 2014 under Roos. To the Western Bulldogs, it was said, for a round-three pick. But the trigger wasn’t pulled.
This time, Goodwin told Watts he was up for trade at the exit interview in September and the two of them caught up after that for further talks.
The blame has been levelled at Goodwin, but clearly this was a list management decision which included Todd Viney, Jason Taylor and Josh Mahoney.
Fans remember the good in Jack.
Such as the goal in the final quarter against Collingwood in Round 12, or his beautiful kicking to position, but they forget the soft marking efforts, missed tackles and lack of run defensively in Rounds 18, 19 and 20, albeit coming off a hamstring injury.
It is said he was a great player for Melbourne. But he wasn’t. He was good player treading water and the club simply can’t tread water anymore.
The fact is Watts has received just 13 Brownlow Medal votes in his 153-game career. Melbourne has won just 46 of those matches.
This year until he was injured he was 11th in the club best and fairest before he finished 21st from 16 games.
Nathan Jones played 16 games and placed second in the B&F. Different players, but also different attitudes.
And, really, when you’re being paid a half a million bucks, 21st doesn’t cut it.
This is not kicking Watts up the bum as he walks out the door, and we all hope he delivers at Port Adelaide, but fans ought to have more faith in Goodwin and the coaching group.
Same as Richmond folk had to trust Damien Hardwick when he put Brett Deledio up for trade. Like Watts, Deledio was loved by the Tiger army. But to move forward, and for the best result for the team, Hardwick made the tough decision.
Bartlett knows Goodwin and Co will continue to make the tough decisions.
Bartlett was made president in August, 2013, a month after he joined the board, and in the same year Melbourne was an embarrassment, winning just two matches.
“From day one, it stood out to me, everything we did we had to have a harder edge,” he said. “There’s been a lot of changes from board level right across the club.
“I hated the fact some of my mates had a view Melbourne was soft on the field and pretty much soft off the field and was going nowhere. That gave me the shits.
“There’s a whole lot of people who have been working really hard for four years and ... we want a hard edge in the way we play. We want competitors, you’ve got to have talent but you need a competitor and character and be team focused, that’s across the club not just the players.”
The scarring of previous environments, which Roos was at pains to point out when he was coach, is no longer an acceptable mindset,
“Over the past four years — and I’m not talking about Jack necessarily here — but if you have players not fitting standards and requirements, it just stands out in the group,” Bartlett said.
“If you have 17 blokes on the field going 100 per cent ferocious and one bloke doesn’t, it stands out.
“We have utmost faith in Todd Viney and Josh Mahoney and Jason Taylor in what they’re doing — end of story.”
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