Simon Goodwin opens up on Melbourne’s shocking 2018 preliminary final and his eye on the future
The last time we saw Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin, he was a forlorn figure after a belting in last year’s preliminary final. He emerged as a guiding light for his players — even if he didn’t mention the shocking loss.
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The last time we saw Simon Goodwin, he was a forlorn figure behind the microphones in the press room at Subiaco.
His team had been crunched by West Coast in the preliminary final, diabolically and shockingly bounced out of September.
That was almost five months ago, so long ago that Goodwin has consigned it to that bountiful box of shameful football matches that are never to be watched again, and largely never spoken of again.
Still, it was significant.
It was a preliminary final, an opportunity gained and a Grand Final prospect lost.
Richmond coach Damien Hardwick described his team’s loss to Collingwood the same weekend as “sh*t happens’’.
For Goodwin, it was sh*t happened.
They lost by 66 points amid a cluster of calamitous moments.
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“In terms of dealing with it, we didn’t have to deal with it because we’re really a look-forward team,’’ Goodwin said this week.
“Obviously you grab whatever learnings we can, but you start to look forward.
“That’s how we’ve always tried to set up our environment.
“I’d prefer to parcel those three weeks as a significant moment for our footy club.
“The growth and exposure of the first two finals at home and the belief that built in the playing group and then obviously the exposure to a really hostile environment in a prelim final against a team which was red hot.
“The disappointing thing of that game was not one phase of our game looked anything like the way we had been playing. It was really hard to assess from that perspective.’’
As West Coast powered to victory, Goodwin had ample time in the second half to assess how he would address the players post-match.
Football history is littered with tall tales and true of coaches shredding their teams after similar losses, ensuring the day lives like an entity for an eternity, or at least until the team returns to make amends.
Think of Sheeds after the ’96 loss to Sydney. The SCG walls are still quivering.
For Goodwin, and it underscores his identity as a coach and leader, and his veil of positivity, he actually knew three weeks earlier what message he would deliver.
“I probably had a thought process probably post-Geelong final how far we had come as a club and where we’d grown to.
“I was incredibly proud of the building blocks we had put in place.
“I had almost prepared myself, that if this journey did come to an end, there would certainly be more positives than negatives that would come out of it.
“You never want it to end the way it ended, but at the same time you wanted to grab hold of the goodness produced for a long period of the seasons.
“They’ve always been a group which have grown out of experience, learning, failure and adversity and I saw this as no different.’’
Footy clubrooms are funeral-like after such monumental defeats and it’s always curious how players remember their coaches.
“We were extremely disappointed so he didn’t pile on the disappointment,” Max Gawn said.
“He was level-headed. He expressed his disappointment but the bigger picture stuff was there as well. That’s him.
“When you see 22 players walk in with their heads between their arses, he read the situation well. Coming over the top again probably wouldn’t have left a good mood on it.’’
Christian Petracca recalled that his coach was optimistic.
“Obviously he was flat, very disappointed, but you have to look at the next year,” Petracca said.
“It’s a bit of a blur but I remember him being optimistic.’’
And how coaches remember everything.
‘’When I walked in and saw all the families, the children … there was some emotion there,’’ Goodwin said.
“We take our families, our supporters, our kids, they’re all invested on the same journey and when that ends the way it did, it was emotional.
“I had initially had a little bit of trouble talking to the players but once again I wanted to make sure they knew how proud I was of what they were able to do that year.
“They knew they had played poorly, I didn’t need to tell them that.’’
Goodwin has not watched the game. and he did not read any critique of it.
“The game was pretty clear in my head,’’ he said.
“I’ve thought about it. Like anyone, to grow and learn you have to reflect so I’ve certainly reflected on everything around our program, the lead-in to the finals, the first final, the second final, what we taught, how we educated our program, our training, how we travelled, all those things you reflect on.
“But it’s too hard an industry to keep looking back and being miserable about what’s behind you so you have to keep going forward.’’
Is the game far removed from your thinking in the middle of February.
“Yeah, a long way.”
Are you annoyed we’re going back there?
“No, it’s your job and it still sits in a lot of people’s minds. It’s there, it’s great exposure, but we need to look forward.’’
So, onwards and upwards.
Goodwin’s fundamentals remain — the contest and pressure and exciting ball movement — and so does the messaging with a twist in delivery.
And the strategy will be tinkered in response to rule changes.
But, after the result in Perth, there hasn’t been a different pathway or ideology introduced. The Demons will labour on being comfortable with being uncomfortable.
“Actually knowing how you’re going to react and what you need to do to stick to the process and stay in the moment,’’ Goodwin said.
It’s why Goodwin invited big-wave surfer Mark Visser to the club’s recent camp at Maroochydore.
“It was around putting them in the water where they are uncomfortable, where they have to stick to a process to get through the challenging exercise,” he said.
“That’s relating a skill from outside our sport and bringing it into our present day.’’
Personally, Goodwin spent two weeks of his off-season in England to better himself as coach and the rest of it with his family loving beach life on the Mornington Peninsula.
In England, he spent two days at the leader’s conference at The Oval — the self called
“premium conference and content platform for leaders in world sport’’ — another day with the P8 group with 16 coaches from around the world chaired by Sir Dave Brailsford, a legendary cycling coach.
In attendance were John Longmire, NRL Roosters coach Trent Robinson, another league coach in Michael Maguire, legendary Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger, and several executives from NBA and MLB teams.
He also spent time with England rugby union coach Eddie Jones and his high-performance manager Neil Craig, at Arsenal with fitness guru Darren Burgess and at the Harlequins rugby union team.
“I looked at all aspects, coaching, environment, culture, high performance and really, when you go on these trips, you’re building a little bit of reinforcement for what you’re doing but you’re also trying to find a couple of bits of gold, whether it’s the way you style your meeting, set up your program, set up your day, how you’re coaching a specific technical element in your game style,’’ Goodwin said.
It’s rare for a team to hop, skip and jump from bottom of the ladder to the premiership, improving yearly, and critics will assess 2019 a failed season if the Demons don’t take a further step forward.
But absolutely nothing is a given in football.
“You want to live in a world where you have got some expectation because that helps drive your pathway, and people only have expectation because of what they’ve seen,’’ he said.
“But then you have to strip it right back to what’s our actual reality. And our reality was we just made the finals last year, we had to go to Perth in Round 22 and win a game.
“For me, it’s not about where we want to get to that’s the end, it’s about how do we build our club and playing group to be the best version of ourselves?
“We actually have to just improve to make the eight. So, then it’s about stripping it back and say, ‘how do we improve’?’’
That’s about development, technically getting better, developing roles within a team, strategy and confronting, moments. It’s also about personnel gains.
The Demons recruited Steven May as a key defender and will get back Jake Lever. That’s a major plus.
The 6-6-6 ruling should aid them with having a dominant ruckman and ball-winning mids such as Clayton Oliver, Jack Viney, James Harmes and Angus Brayshaw.
The Demons have tremendous depth.
What will Sam Weideman realise this year? Will Petracca play the game unfettered by self expectation? Will Jordan Lewis stay in the 22? What about Joel Smith as a forward and Bayley Fritsch? And does ruckman Braydon Pruess play?
“I don’t sit up at night and wonder who’s going to play in the team because the team works itself out by how people perform, they pick themselves,’’ he said.
“Clearly, you think about how you look forward of the ball, what are we prepared to test on, what are we prepared to learn on, are we better off going smaller, trying two ruckmen?’’
Make no mistake, amid the rule changes — which Goodwin says he has encouraged his coaches to find opportunities within — he says he won’t change his fundamentals or creativity as coach.
Last year, and successfully for a period, it was starting players at the back of the square at centre bounces for example.
“I’ve always in my coaching wanted to be a test-and-learn coach, so that drives innovation,’’ he said.
“If you’re not prepared to test something, or trial something, and even if you trial something and it doesn’t work, is there an element that did work? Is there an element you can use again? If you tinker with that will that make it better?
“If you’re not prepared to go into that space then you will never get actually something which might improve you from time to time.’’
It’s long gone the preliminary final last September and Goodwin’s philosophy of learning through adversity will continue to be the bedrock of his mental teachings.
It’s so ingrained under Goodwin, he says he won’t ever talk about the loss, which is their new marker of mediocrity.
“They know that,’’ he said.
“They don’t need me to tell them we don’t go back there (as a team). What they need me to do is show them the path forward.’’
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