A payout of nearly $1 million for the final year of Simon Goodwin’s contract would not stop Melbourne from parting ways with the premiership coach should the board decide the change was the circuit breaker the club needed.
Melbourne are determined to make significant changes this year after another season that has spiralled into misery. There is a harder edge to Melbourne’s decision-making this year and the potential of a payout for Goodwin or other contracted staff will not be an impediment to change should they decide it is required.
Simon Goodwin has a contract for next year, but Melbourne’s poor form - including Sunday’s loss to St Kilda - means the Demons are under pressure to make changes.Credit: Getty Images
Goodwin’s position remains under serious threat at season’s end, and possibly sooner should the club lose to bottom-of-the-ladder West Coast at the weekend.
The Demons board held a scheduled board meeting on Monday, which included presentations from both Goodwin and former All Blacks performance head Darren Shand, the consultant who ran the club’s football review at the end of last year.
Board member Steven Smith, who will take over as club president from Brad Green later in the year, joined the meeting by conference call from Europe. While the board did not settle on what its next course of action will be, it was agreed that significant changes to the football department are needed. The timing of decisions on those changes will not be reliant on the handover of the presidency.
Senior Melbourne sources said the board would analyse the football department and performance again, look at Shand’s review conducted at the end of last year and examine whether changes recommended then were properly implemented this year.
They will consider Alan Richardson’s role as the club’s head of football, the broader coaching panel as well as the senior coaching position, and most pointedly, consider whether changing the senior coach is necessary to prompt cultural and seismic change at the club, or simply the easiest and most symbolic change to make.
What change would have the biggest impact at a club that needs to halt a continued slide from their premiership year? Moving on the one coach in the past 60 years to take the club to a premiership? Overhauling the rest of the coaches and football figures? Being more aggressive in turning over the playing list? Or all of the above?
The potential availability of a number of experienced senior AFL coaches – namely Adam Simpson, John Longmire and Nathan Buckley – cannot be ignored when considering whether Goodwin’s message is still getting through or the group needs a new voice.
Melbourne believe they could cover the impact on the soft cap of paying out the final year of Goodwin’s contract, or other contracts, if it came to a decision to part ways.
The only certainty, as a senior Melbourne figure said, was that all options were on the table for the football department, with the board agreeing the status quo was not working. The dissatisfaction and resignation of members and sponsors is not lightly dismissed.
While all options are on the table for the broad football department and strategy, the same does not apply to the playing list, as players such as Max Gawn and Kysaiah Pickett will not be up for trade.
The Demons are aware they have stuck with the same midfield of Gawn, Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney since their 2021 premiership. That midfield blend was formidable when their game style, predicated on contested ball and strong defence, was the successful dominant method of play, but has waned in the years that the trend has been towards transition running and repeat speed.
Debate has been had internally about whether Melbourne’s list is suited to that style of play or, if it is, then is the style getting trough to the players? That is the list-versus-coaching debate every club that finds itself in this situation argues about (see Carlton).
Melbourne refused to trade Oliver to Geelong last year, believing the return offered was insufficient, and shutdown Petracca’s restlessness for a move.
The club still believes it would need a significant return to entertain moving any of its players, including that pair, on. The Demons do not have a first round draft pick this year.
As a senior Melbourne figure observed of their season, doing nothing is not an option.
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