AFL round 4: Simon Goodwin in election mode, but is he the man to make Melbourne great again?

Christian Petracca’s reaction said it all. Melbourne is floundering and its coach is in election mode. The question now is, will the Demons give Simon Goodwin time to make Melbourne great again?

GEELONG, AUSTRALIA – APRIL 04: Simon Goodwin, Senior Coach of the Demons looks on during the 2025 AFL Round 04 match between the Geelong Cats and the Melbourne Demons at GMHBA Stadium on April 4, 2025 in Geelong, Australia. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

It is campaign season and Simon Goodwin has found his new sound bites.

In the bowels of GMHBA Stadium at just past 11pm on Friday, Goodwin bounded into his press conference and unleashed some new slogans.

“The message is to stay calm but get urgent,” he said.

“We are four weeks in, stay calm but get urgent. That has been the message, we have work to do, get urgent with that work but stay calm and know that things can turn pretty quick.”

After “stay calm but get urgent” sounded like a misprint in a ripoff souvenir shop of a Keep Calm and Carry On mug, Goodwin went again.

Three times the Dees coach said some variant of: “We’re not here to just get better, we are here to start taking some really good results for our footy club”.

Campaigning may soon take up much of Goodwin’s job, if the Demons carry on their form after a 0-4 start, the premiership coach will have to soon fight for his job.

Having gone 1-9 in their last 10 games, Goodwin has to find a way to Make Melbourne Great Again.

As is always the issue for incumbent politicians with flagging polling figures, their mistakes linger and the public doesn’t forget.

Melbourne fans can’t forget the endless stream of wasted inside-50s over and over again in recent years.

Again on Friday as the Dees folded into a 39-point loss in Geelong, that forward connection was the problem.

“Some execution stuff let us down and they punished us,” Demon Christian Salem said.

“It is frustrating. You can imagine being a forward in that situation. We had done such a good job of winning the ball back and getting it to 70m out and we are just missing that piece. We saw at times we did connect and how powerful that was.”

Simon Goodwin addresses his players during their loss to Geelong.

As Salem said, imagine being a Melbourne forward.

As promising as Jacob van Rooyen has been in his time at Melbourne, he has struggled to start the season.

Christian Petracca was Melbourne’s best forward on Friday and, while that was the best position for the team, his best position is as a midfielder.

Bayley Fritsch is a shadow of the star who kicked six goals in a grand final four years ago and Aidan Johnson and Daniel Turner have been swapped in and out of the VFL.

The players further afield continue to fail their forwards.

“There was some execution stuff that I guess let us down and Geelong made us pay,” Salem said.

“We are thinking the right stuff but the execution is hurting us. If we want to get back to where we want to get to we have to fix that up.”

The problem here is the Demons have been trying and failing to fix that up for years.

Just this season, Melbourne has failed in the front half.

Melbourne players trudge off after a fourth-straight defeat to start 2025.

In round 1, it won the inside-50 count by four against GWS but lost a thriller.

A week later Melbourne was smashed by North Melbourne by 59 points but actually had three more inside-50s.

Gold Coast easily won the count, by 25, in a crushing win last week, but the Dees actually had one more inside-50 on Friday night in a 39-point loss.

Basically, the Demons can get the ball forward plenty but can’t score.

Goodwin’s team must “just get better” before those positive results come.

Before Friday night, only Carlton (15.5 per cent) kicked goals from inside-50s at a lesser rate than Melbourne (18.4 per cent).

The Dees went even worse than that against the Cats, booting six goals from 50 entries, equal to 12 per cent.

The free flowing Adelaide offence led the league before the weekend, goaling from 35.6 per cent, almost double the Dees.

It’s not a new problem but Goodwin and his coaching staff are seemingly no closer to solving it.

“I think we can acknowledge our execution needs to improve,” Goodwin said.

“That was a clear difference in the teams tonight. A big part was execution, their ability to maximise their ability to maximise their entries and execute with the ball in hand. Right across the ground but particularly inside-50.

“It gave them greater scoring opportunities than it did for us. We generated some really good looks but we just weren’t able to finish those plays.”

Like some voters across the nation, Melbourne fans are surely sick of those empty promises.

While the Dees tried harder this week, defended harder and were sharper around the ball, there just wasn’t enough class to beat a good side.

As all election campaigners know, sometimes you just need the momentum to kick in and the polls can start to turn.

The Demons do have a chance now to right the ship, with games against Essendon (In Adelaide), Fremantle (MCG), Richmond (MCG) and West Coast (Perth) to come.

Realistically, Goodwin and his Demons can be 4-4 when the national election is counted and the incumbent will be seeing much sunnier polling.

But there are no easy wins for this team that is fighting hard to find any kind of flow.

“We will keep believing in what can work for us and we just need to keep stacking up the weeks, it is a long season,” Salem said.

Melbourne just has to hope it doesn’t become a really, really long season.

Originally published as AFL round 4: Simon Goodwin in election mode, but is he the man to make Melbourne great again?