Neil Craig and Kevin Sheedy dismiss favourites tag ahead of GWS-Melbourne clash

MELBOURNE'S Neil Craig and GWS coach Kevin Sheedy can't agree on which team should be favourite this weekend.

Kevin Sheedy

MELBOURNE'S caretaker coach Neil Craig agrees his team is the outsider in the bottom-of-the-ladder clash with GWS Giants in Sydney on Saturday.

Craig isn't surprised betting agencies have installed the winless Giants as pre-game favourites for the first time in their short AFL history.

"I can understand that. If you looked at GWS's form last week and looked at our form, I know who I would have as favourite," Craig said before training today.

"That's okay, that's not going to go away. We certainly want to get good enough to be the favourite every week and the pressure that comes with that."

On whether his players would consider being the money underdog as an excuse rather than an outrage, Craig said: "I would disappointed. The last thing our football club needs is excuses. We should be judged on our merits."

While Craig's Demons may be on the rebound from a 122-point hiding, Greater Western Sydney coach Kevin Sheedy was dismissive of the suggestion GWS could start favourite.

The bookies disagree, with the Giants firming into favouritism for the first time.

"It makes no sense. All I'll say is that it will be a tight game," Sheedy said.

Asked about the growing fascination with Saturday's game, Sheedy said it probably emanated from Melbourne.

"Probably, it's Melbourne as a club and Melbourne as the city," Sheedy said.

"We're in our second season all up, so I would imagine that there's that sort of competitiveness between a team from the west of Sydney and Melbourne, out of who is going to end up on the bottom.

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"Obviously we are there at the moment. If we can win a game and win another one, then all of a sudden you can roll the dice a bit."

Asked which team he thought would be under more pressure to win Sheedy said: "I think there's a fair chance we need to win.

"We played probably our best game for the year last week, I would have thought. Two points down against a finals team at three-quarter time and it was probably our best performance at the MCG," he said.

Craig, the Demons' stand-in senior coach, admitted stopping Giants' spearhead Jeremy Cameron was a daunting challenge, particularly without All-Australian defender James Frawley - who has a third hamstring injury - and doubt over whether Colin Garland has sufficiently recovered from an ankle injury.

"I've watched it (Cameron's seven goals against Collingwood) back a few times. I actually have got it up on the screen in my office. It would put you off your lunch every now and again," Craig said.

"You love to see exceptional talent coming through, he could be a 10-12 year player who's going to excite the crowds. But that's okay, I've got great confidence in the guys that we've got to stand him.

"Colin Garland is still an opportunity to come back, he did some training this morning and we'll see how he settles down. You've got Tom McDonald who continues to grow as a defender, you've got Lynden Dunn who can play on tall and small (opponents) and Cam Pedersen who was brought to this club probably for a variety of roles, but he played in defence last week."

Craig said he had a brief discussion with Jack Watts over his decision to put contract talks on hold.

"Any player has the right to take their time in terms of contractual arrangements because it's a big decision. I don't have an issue with Jack making that decision. He didn't give me the indication it would be based on the next coach because the reality with that is, if it's not me and Jack probably doesn't know me that well yet, if it's someone else, he may not even know that coach," he said.

The experienced coach said it was "a big challenge" to pick up the players' morale following the embarrassing North Melbourne defeat - the ninth worst in the Demons' history.

"It's not totally my responsibility, the players play a significant part in that for them to go through that sort of performance. And therefore we need to accept responsibility for it to regroup and go again. Which we will. And how well we do that, we'll get judged at the weekend," he said.

"It's not the first time it has happened in the history of AFL footy. I'm not trying to divert any of that result at all, but at the end of 2011 Collingwood going into a finals series got beaten by Geelong by 90-plus points.

"So those sort of performances are always with you as a club, no matter how successful you are or where you sit on the premiership table.

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"What we've got to do as a footy club is eliminate the number of times it happens in a year. It would be absolutely foolish to think you would never be exposed to that ever again.

"Your great cultures always have high expectations under all conditions, when things are going well and when things go badly. We've got a perfect example in this building called Melbourne Storm, who lost five games in a row last year and won the (NRL) premiership.

"You need to embrace adversity and expect great things to come from it. And we have an opportunity to do that."

Meanwhile, Giants midfielder Rhys Palmer has been ruled out of the rest of the season with a serious foot injury.

The 24-year-old will this week have surgery on the niggling injury, which he aggravated against Sydney in round 16, and is not expected to re-join the squad for training until the pre-season.