Garry Lyon: We’re about to find out if Melbourne will sink or swim after horror start to the season

The Demons have been thrown overboard in a dark start to 2025 – and now Simon Goodwin needs to find out who can sink or swim. Garry Lyon unpacks the changes the Dees need to make.

The AFL season is like trying to negotiate a long, winding, unpredictable river on a wooden raft.

There will be times when the waters are calm and the journey is a beautiful, peaceful, relaxing exercise, where the greatest challenge is not falling asleep while enjoying the warm sunshine and light zephyr.

At other times you will find yourself in the middle of a raging torrent, barely capable of staying aboard as huge rocks threaten to smash your craft to pieces, submerged trees emerge from nowhere and the rain belts down so heavily, you can barely chart the direction forward.

And then, you get thrown overboard. That’s when you quickly find out who can swim against the tide, and save themselves from going under.

For the Melbourne Football Club, this short, three week season has been all of that. With 90 seconds to go in their opening encounter against the GWS Giants, one of the flag favourites, the waters were calm and the sun had almost completely emerged from behind the clouds. A well deserved upset victory against quality opposition was there for the taking, Christian Petracca had returned to his dominant best with 27 touches and 2 goals, Max Gawn was the highest rated player on the ground and Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney shared 52 possessions and 10 clearances between them.

And then Lachlan Keefe kicks a goal with a touch over a minute to go and tips the raft upside down, and they’ve been floundering among the rapids ever since.

The tide that they find themselves swimming against is formidable. And the whole football world knows what it looks like. Hell, even the lovely, 79 year old lady at the dry cleaners I’ve been going to for 20 years knows what the issues are.

“How come we can’t move the ball from the backline and why can’t we score from turnover?” she barked at me as I picked up my shirts this week.

I almost expected David King to appear from the back of the shop with his laptop, so well informed she was.

The tide they’re up against looks something like this:

• At an average age 26.7 on the weekend, it was Melbournes 2nd oldest team list for a game since 1931.

• In an era where punishing turnover has never been more important, they have regressed from 4th in points from turnover in 2021 to 16th last year and currently 17th this year.

• Continuing the theme of poor ball movement, they are 16th for moving the ball from half back to inside 50 and 18th for scoring from half back.

• Just as worryingly, they were the 2nd hardest team to score against from turnover in 2021 and last year they were 13th and this year 14th.

• Converting inside 50s to scores has seen them drop from 2nd in 2021 to 16th last year and currently 17th this year.

Max Gawn and his Demons teammates walk off after losing to Gold Coast. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images.

A lot of that will be of little surprise to those that have followed the Demons closely. What has compounded things is that the advantage they have historically had at stoppage and in particular at centre bounces has almost dissipated completely. Gawn is still getting his hands on the ball, with Melbourne sitting 3rd for hit-outs to advantage, but that is where the positive news ends.

They are 9th for getting the first possession and 17th for first possession to clearance rate.

As has been observed, the long time kings of centre bounce and clearance have been obliterated in consecutive weeks by the fresh, new, hungry breed.

Knowing those boys – Gawn, Petracca, Viney and Oliver particularly – that will not sit well with them. They are proud, combative and competitive beasts who have been to the top of the mountain and will not enjoy being pushed aside and stepped over. What remains to be seen, is whether they are still capable of doing something about it. Feeling slighted and disrespected is one thing, and the relentless media cycle has not missed them, but having your feelings hurt doesn’t automatically lead to a vicious response.

Otherwise, why didn’t we see it after the North Melbourne mauling? No, the issues of the past fortnight pose many questions, and we are about to find out how well some of the modern day stars of the last five years can swim against the tide.

The other option the Demons can confront is to change the tide completely.

That is a longer, more strenuous journey, but there are some positive signs that the process can be started.

It sits with the younger talent they have been able to introduce in recent years. The starting four in the centre bounce on Friday night could conceivably be Gawn, Kozzie Picket, Harvey Langford and one of either Viney or Oliver.

Langford will be a work in progress, as any first year player is, but there is so much to like. While his physical presence, size and ball winning ability was so impressive last week, it was what he did with the ball that excited so much. He was the fourth highest rated player on the ground for ball use against the Suns, an area of the game that his much more celebrated teammates are sadly lacking in. Pickett was the most dynamic centre bounce player in the pre-season for Melbourne and immediately gives them a more dynamic look. You would imagine he and Petracca will share the mid/forward role with their ability to win ground ball inside the Demons forward 50 through the 2021-23 period having them in the top 6 in the competition. It is another area that has fallen away so badly, from the best ground ball team in the comp in their premiership year to 15th last year and 12th in 2025.

Harvey Langford and Jake Melksham after their side’s loss to the Suns. Picture: Josh Chadwick/AFL Photos/via Getty Images.

Xavier Lindsay has had as good a first two games of his career as any Melbourne player in the last 25 years. His composure under pressure and ability to make the right decision almost every time is another desperately welcome addition to a team that has struggled to find good decision makers. His absence will be felt.

Along with Judd McVee, Trent Rivers and Kade Chandler, there are options in the coming weeks to present different looks through the middle of the ground.

But for now, there are more hypotheticals that present OK on paper, but are yet to be fully tested. The tide remains firmly against this side, and in Geelong they confront an opponent that plays modern football. They embrace the chaos, they have steadily added to their list of elite runners and savvy ball users that will tear apart any side that displays an apathy that the has embodied Melbourne in the past 2 weeks.

Sink or swim? We’re about to find out.

Originally published as Garry Lyon: We’re about to find out if Melbourne will sink or swim after horror start to the season