AFL Preliminary Final Melbourne v Geelong: Steven May hamstring injury update
Nathan Jones has touched down in Melbourne after choosing to leave the Demons to be at the birth of his twins.
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Demons veteran Nathan Jones has arrived back in Melbourne after choosing to leave his team’s Perth hub to be at the birth of his twins.
Jones arrived at Tullamarine Airport on his own Saturday night following the Demon’s emphatic preliminary final victory.
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The former skipper and three-time best and fairest winner said he only came to the decision following last night’s match.
“I knew at some time I would come to a crossroads and it was probably in the last day or two, really,” he said.
“I was relying on the result last night and obviously the health of the team, fortunately for them it went in their favour but unfortunately for me from a playing perspective, not so much.”
The 33-year-old said he “could not be happier” with the decision to miss a chance at Grand Final selection.
“I’m comfortable with the decision I’ve made and I’m absolutely pumped with where the club is at, the opportunity that’s ahead for the players and all my mates.”
“Everyone at the club’s put so much time and effort into getting to this point, and it’s just a small reward but obviously the big dance is still ahead and we’ve still got a job to do.
“The main thing is the support of the fans and the members who have stuck by us when it’s been so long, I think it’s a small reward for them for sticking thin through some pretty lean times, and hopefully they get the ultimate reward in a few weeks.”
Jones said he was ecstatic to be returning to his wife Jerri and kids Bobby and Remi, with new additions to the family imminent.
“I’m looking forward to getting back to see my kids and wife, and the twins are due in the next day or two, so my hands will be pretty full!”
May’s ‘no chance’ declaration after hamstring scare
Melbourne defender Steven May has declared himself a certain starter for Saturday week’s AFL Grand Final, saying there is “no chance” he will miss the club’s shot at history.
May threw a massive scare through the Demons’ camp early on Friday night after clutching his hamstring after being pushed out of a contest from Geelong forward Tom Hawkins.
He came off for treatment, then returned to the game for a period with tape on his hamstring, but was ultimately subbed out of the contest.
But the All-Australian backman said he had pulled up better than expected and was extremely confident he would be right for the biggest game of his career.
“There’s no chance I’m missing that,” May told the club’s website on Saturday.
“It’s pulled up really well – as good as I had hoped.
“The fact that my strength and everything was there, and I was able to go back on, gave me a lot of confidence.”
May will benefit from the AFL’s decision to have a bye between the preliminary finals and the Grand Final, which will give him extra time to prove his fitness.
He said he now had a good understanding of his body after having overcome an injury-interrupted start to his time with the Demons.
While Melbourne will tread cautiously with his training program in the rundown to the Grand Final, May hasn’t ruled out being ready for the club’s next main session.
“I’m super confident in my body, I know my body pretty well now – I’ve been in really good shape this year,” he said.
JONES MAKES ONE FINAL SACRIFICE
Melbourne veteran Nathan Jones has given up on his dream of a last-minute recall for the AFL Grand Final at Perth Stadium, choosing to fly back to Victoria on Saturday for the birth of his twins next week.
Demons skipper Max Gawn said the 33-year-old - who has toiled for 16 seasons and more than 300 games in pursuit of a premiership - had made another selfless decision for the sake of his family and to take pressure off the Demons’ selection committee.
When he was leaving Perth on Saturday, Jones said: “Obviously for my teammates, I am rapt for them and I hope they can bring home the premiership in a couple of weeks’ time.”
Jones hasn’t played an AFL match since Round 15 and was almost certain to miss on selection for the Grand Final.
Gawn said Jones understood he had only a faint chance of a recall, which made the decision easier to return home to his wife Jerri as she prepares for the birth of their twins.
“It’s a really tough decision but he wants to see the birth of his twins,” Gawn said on Saturday.
“He also wants to see a (Melbourne) flag, but obviously one thing comes first.”
Gawn said Jones, who may have played his last game for the club, “won’t be remembered for the Melbourne of old; he will be remembered for changing Melbourne.
“That’s definitely the way I will remember him.
“If we have seen the last of him, and I am not sure what his plans are for next year or anything like that ... (but) the character he has not put on the selection committee with James Jordon - who has been the sub for the last seven or eight weeks, and probably deserves to be sub for nine weeks - (has been selfless).
“He is not going to put the pressure (on the selectors) in that situation. He is going to stand up and say ‘No, I am going to be there to see the birth of my twins’.
“He is a bigger man than me.
“I think he saw he had done everything he could to possibly get a game, there was let’s say a three or four percent chance that he was going to play, (so) he would rather be with the twins.”
DEMONS SURGE INTO FIRST GRAND FINAL IN 21 YEARS
Melbourne supporters would’ve felt uneasy when the Demons decided to double-dip at the 2014, 2015 and 2019 national drafts.
A decade of draft disasters had burned their belief, a pain only desensitised by 57 years of failure.
Hot selections squandered on Cale Morton (No. 4 in 2007), Jack Grimes (No. 14), Jack Watts (No. 1 in 2008), Sam Blease (No. 17), James Strauss (No. 19), Lucas Cook (No. 12 in 2010) and Jimmy Toumpas (No. 4 in 2012) headlined the wipe-out, not to mention overlooking Dustin Martin twice in 2009.
The talent drain expanded as coaches flipped around. They haven’t wasted a hand since.
From bluff and bust to astraight flush, going bullseye on Luke Jackson (No. 3 in 2019), Kozzie Pickett (No. 12), Clayton Oliver (No. 4 in 2015), Sam Weideman (No. 9), Christian Petracca (No. 2 in 2014), Angus Brayshaw (No. 3), Christian Salem (No. 9 in 2012) and Jack Viney (father-son).
No longer is there room for a flighty footballer. They are bulls, these midfielders.
Big, strong, powerful and contested bulls, and they ripped the Cats to shreds.
They are so ferocious that warrior Nathan Jones has sadly been tipped to the side.
For Jones, one fairytale ends and another begins.
It can be revealed that heart-and-soul champion will fly home on Sunday morning to reunite with wife Jerri, who is in hospital preparing to give birth to twins.
Jones was desperate to bow out a premiership star, but a place in the Grand Final 23 is simply not to be.
Jones shouldn’t reflect the hellish ‘Old Melbourne’, rather the bridge who helped connect the dark with the light.
Geelong entered Friday night’s preliminary final with 323 games of experience to Melbourne’s 69.
They were flush for preliminary finals and Melbourne was supposed to be flush in the cheeks.
It shows history means bugger all.
Petracca, Oliver and Brayshaw are making their own history.
It is a Grand New Flag for these boys who spoil, smother, poke, prod and deflect without the Sherrin.
How often do the Dees scrape in a fingernail to affect the footy?
They make it deviate. They force a routine 10m handball to fall short, which invites them all to dial up the pressure.
Then, they become devastating, and they are ignited by lightning hands.
Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge rates Oliver’s hands as the cleanest, or close to, in the AFL.
But Petracca has him for speed and Salem has them for poise and vision.
Ten years after Geelong smoked Melbourne by 186 points, the Demons seized their weapons in a preliminary final.
It was their best performance this century. The Demons scored 101 points from stoppage, the fourth-most since statistics were taken in 1999.
The record was 108 points, set by the Cats at Kardinia Park that day.
Thank goodness chief executive Gary Pert stuck fat with Goodwin after last year’s review.
Richmond superstar Jack Riewoldt reckons the bubbliness at Melbourne mirrors the Tigers of 2017, which followed under-fire coach Damien Hardwick surviving in similar circumstances.
Sometimes you have to stay the course rather than blow up the whole operation …. wisdom which didn’t extend to sacked Carlton coach David Teague.
Steve May’s delicate hamstring was the only sour note.
May 15 days of hyperbaric chambers and blood injections save Steve, who stayed on as goalkeeper after the early tweak.
The microwave analysis will declare the Cats are over the cliff.
History is the perfect guide.
That was the storyline after Geelong ran into Melbourne in 2018 and a roaring Richmond in 2017, 2019 and 2020.
Time to take a breath. Shaun Higgins, Joel Selwood and Tom Hawkins are 33 and Isaac Smith and Josh Jenkins are 32.
But Higgins and Jenkins can’t get a game, Selwood is no longer an integral part and hulking Hawkins is a long way from slowing down.
Smith, too, was a late bloomer whose body finds space more often than battle scars.
So where would the regression come from?
The three-headed monster of Esava Ratugolea, Jeremy Cameron and Hawkins is Chris Scott’s favourite recipe while Mark O’Connor, Jack Henry, Gryian Miers and Bradley Close are on the up.
After five preliminary finals in six seasons, it is unlikely Scott’s side will step steeply south.
The critics will come for Scott, too, given the Cats are like Alf Stewart – home-and-away stars.
Instead the question should be this – how does Geelong actually take that next step?
Has any club ever set up camp so close to the summit and then actually ascended up it?
Perhaps Port Adelaide was the last in 2004, when coach Mark Williams shed the chokers tag as Byron Pickett won the Norm Smith.
Fast forward 17 years and Williams is back in the big one, this time as Melbourne’s development coach, and Pickett’s nephew Kysaiah is in his grasp.
Perhaps there would be one slice of history worth bringing back from the past.
No, not a Power premiership, put a Pickett Norm Smith, because Kozzie plays with a blast.
Match report: 57-year flag drought on the brink of coming to an end
– Brad Elborough and Simeon Thomas-Wilson
It’s really happening.
The longest current AFL/VFL premiership drought is on the brink of coming to an end.
Melbourne has just one last hurdle to navigate before it can hold aloft its first cup in 57 years after it demolished Geelong by 83 points in the Preliminary Final at Optus Stadium on Friday night, 19.11 (125) to 6.6 (42).
The last obstacle looms large though, a grand final against either Port Adelaide or the Western Bulldogs, also in Perth, on Saturday, September 25.
“I think it feels terrific for our footy club, we have worked really hard to be involved in these significant games, we now have an opportunity to do something really special,” Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin said post-match.
They might also need to find a replacement for key defender Steven May, who appeared to injure a hamstring in the first quarter and was forced from the ground.
He returned, but was clearly sore and was finally subbed out in the third term.
But Goodwin said the Demons were expecting May to play in the grand final.
“Steve just has a bit of a tight hamstring, clearly he came back on the ground,” Goodwin said.
“We think it is back related … we are quietly confident he will be OK
“But we will assess that over the next couple of days.”
Goodwin explained why they waited until the third quarter to sub May out of the game for an injury suffered in the first term.
“The game was in the balance and he is an extremely important player for us … at that stage it was a risk that we were willing to take,” he said.
While Covid has forced the season decider away from the MCG, again, and has also stopped most Victorian-based Melbourne fans and members from enjoying the emotional ride with their team, the Demons are well supported in the West.
Geelong made a last-ditch effort to win over the WA crowd, promoting current locals who wear the navy blue hoops, such as Mitch Duncan, and some from yesteryear, such as the late and great Graham Polly Farmer.
But whether the Demons have a large supporter-base in WA, or the locals have jumped on their plight to end the run without a flag, the crowd of 58,599 was clearly biased to the red and the blue.
Big lessons learned
When the Demons won their 12th, and last flag, in 1964, the entire current squad were far from being even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.
When they last played in a grand final, a 60-point loss to Essendon in 2000, Jake Bowey, Luke Jackson, Trent Rivers, Kysaiah Pickett and James Jordon, of the current crop, still weren’t born. Clayton Oliver was only three and of the oldest Demons players on the ground on Friday night, Michael Hibberd was just 10 and Max Gawn was eight.
There isn’t much finals experience among the Melbourne squad, but they seem to have learned from what little they have had.
There were 12 players returning to the scene of their embarrassing Preliminary Final loss to West Coast in 2018, when they failed to kick one goal in the first half.
Those Demons have three years more experience under their belts and it shows. The additions of May, Ed Langdon, Jake Lever and Ben Brown from other clubs hasn’t hurt either.
They had nine goals on the board by halftime against the Cats, with eight different goal scorers and they led by 29 points at the main break.
The need for speed
The age of the Geelong’s playing group was a big concern in the game’s lead-up. It’s going to be an even bigger talking point over the coming off-season.
They brought Jeremy Cameron and Isaac Smith, who have made them a more potent team, but at what cost in the long term?
Joel Selwood, Duncan and Tom Hawkins all played in Geelong’s last premiership in 2011.
The Cats had 16 left from last year’s Grand Final loss to Richmond, where they were run over in the final term.
In Round 23 this season, after leading Melbourne by seven goals during the third term, they completely lost momentum and then the game, courtesy of a Gawn goal after the siren.
Including Friday night’s sub, Shaun Higgins, the Cats had 11 players aged 30 years or more.
Melbourne had one, Michael Hibberd.
That gap in youthfulness and lack of leg speed never looked more obvious than in the third quarter on Friday when the Demons kicked seven consecutive goals in 16 minutes to open up a matchwinning 71-point lead.
In what will go down as one of the most famous evenings in club history, Demons skipper Gawn made sure he will also go down in the annals with one of the great preliminary final quarters.
Before Friday night, Gawn had never kicked four goals, he changed that in 10 incredible minutes in the third quarter at Optus Stadium on Friday night.
One was from outside 50m after a couple of bounces by the big ruckman, another was from a snap as he was being dragged to ground.
The Demons captain had seven kicks for the third quarter, four of them were goals as he put his stamp well and truly on the game.
It added to an incredible goal in the second quarter after Gawn got a touched kick from teammate Petracca and wheeled around multiple Cats defenders to snap the ball between the sticks.
“I think he (Gawn) typified tonight why he is the skipper of this footy team, he played his heart out and that tackle on Gary Rohan in the third quarter. He didn’t given up,” Goodwin said.
“I think tonight we build belief again, we handled the moment well and it was about showing people who we were.”
The big dance
The MCG not hosting the Grand Final is a cruel blow for the success-starved Demons supporters on the east coast.
For the second consecutive year, a tenant of the home of footy may claim the title away from their home, as the Tigers did in Brisbane last year.
Making this year even worse is that there is now a bye before the Grand Final. The Demons faithful need to keep control of their mixed emotions for a week longer than they normally would.
But as the twilight (Perth time) bounce down for the Grand Final gets closer, regardless of where they are watching from, surely the anger around the venue for the game will have disappeared.
The last time a team had to wait two weeks to play in a grand final was back when second semi-finalists won straight through to the big dance.
That hasn’t happened since 1993 when Carlton had a week off after beating Adelaide in the second semi-final, then lost to Essendon in the big game by 44 points.
The year before, West Coast beat Geelong in the Grand Final a fortnight after beating the Cats in the Second Semi-Final.
The difference this season is that the Demons, and either the Dogs or Power, will both have to navigate the extra week off.
It’s going to be a long two weeks.
SCOREBOARD
DEMONS 5.3 9.6 17.8 19.11 (125)
CATS 1.0 5.1 5.2 6.6 (42)
ELBOROUGH’S BEST
Demons: Petracca, Gawn, Viney, Oliver, Salem, Lever.
Cats: Dangerfield, Selwood, Duncan, C Guthrie, Close, Bews.
GOALS
Demons: Gawn 5; Pickett 3; Brown 2, Spargo 2, Fritsch 2; Harmes, McDonald, Neal-Bullen, Petracca, Sparrow.
Cats: Cameron 2; Hawkins, Miers, Smith, Stanley.
INJURIES
Demons: May (hamstring), replaced Jordon.
Cats: Rohan (hamstring) replaced by Higgins.
UMPIRES Donlon, Meredith, Mollison
VENUE Optus Stadium
Heartwarming scenes as Daniher watches on
In a sight that will warm the heart of every Melbourne fan, the Demons have posted a photo of club legend Neale Daniher in his red and blue ahead of the preliminary final against Geelong.
In a great show of support Daniher, who has bravely fought motor neuron’s disease since 2014, donned his Demons gear and posed for a photo in the lead-up to the blockbuster clash.
Demons captain Max Gawn did give hope that the Nathan Jones might get a chance to be the medical sub in the prelim – and even the grand final if Melbourne got there – saying the former skipper was their 24th man.
But the Dees went with James Jordon as their medical sub as they seek to end years of pain.
Melbourne legend Garry Lyon said Jones’ current situation was “heartbreaking”.
“There was a time late in Jimmy’s (Jim Stynes) presidency when the footy club was in a power of trouble and he (Jones) was the shining light,” Lyon said on Fox Footy.
“There was every excuse for him to leave, no-one would have begrudged him.
“He wasn’t getting the best opportunity … yet he stuck the task and stayed and his level of professionalism, performance and care for the footy club never diminished.
“And now you have this modern day situation which breaks your heart but there are no fairytales in footy.
“He is not in the best 23 or 24 and he has the situation at home with his wife who is heavily pregnant with twins and he has stuck (with the team).
“Yeah I’ve thought about him a lot, it’s heartbreaking.”
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