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Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin has come under fire for failing to shake up his forward line as their premiership campaign came crashing down.
Fox Footy’s Mark Robinson said Goodwin simply “wouldn’t accept” that his attack end was a problem in 2022, instead opting to blame the ball movement.
But the club was bundled out of the finals race in straight sets as Harrison Petty’s forward line shift came too late in the semi final loss to Brisbane.
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“Goody wouldn’t accept the forwards were struggling,” Robinson said.
“The amount of times Ben Brown and Luke Jackson dropped the mark, had jack s**t to do with ball movement. They are there to take marks and win games of football and they didn’t.
“Right at the end, Goody said ‘we’ve got to move Petty forward’. They are in control at half time, they are not moving anything (player-wise). It’s that halfway through the third quarter when the game starts to shift – ‘we can’t take a mark, we can’t kick a goal’, does he then pull the trigger then and say ‘Petty move forward’ and not at the 20-min mark of the last quarter?
“These are these moments – does Goody think back or the coaching staff, and think: ‘We could have done something then?’
“Petty wasn’t doing much in defence at that stage because they kicked six goals against them in that third quarter.”
Robinson said the Demons were “banged up” and “boring” by season’s end, while AFL360 co-host Gerard Whateley was critical of their predictable games.
“In the back portion of the season, I feel like I called the same game over and over with Melbourne,” he lamented.
“They would start like a German band, miss the chances so they weren’t as far ahead as they should have been, then the opposition would figure out how to stop kicking to their intercept defenders, ratchet up the pressure and that’s it. Rinse and repeat.”
Robinson said the argument that Melbourne broke their premiership drought last season and that meant their straight sets’ finals exit was “OK” didn’t wash with him.
“(They say) ‘It’s OK, we won last year’ – no! It’s not good enough! They’re going to have a pretty big review – Alan Richardson, Simon Goodwin down there and say what went wrong?” Robinson urged.
“They were besieged by bad luck. Tom McDonald gets an injury and he’s out for the year and people go, ‘Gee we really miss Tom McDonald’. Ben Brown fell in a hole. Weideman didn’t stand up when he got an opportunity so he’s out.
“Everyone knew how they were going to play.
“Other teams have made changes to their list – look at Geelong, all the transformation in personnel and position. It didn’t seem like that with Melbourne (in 2022).”
After quarter time in the loss to Brisbane, Melbourne kicked inside 50 33 times for just three marks.
“This has been a malaise for them throughout the course of the year,” Garry Lyon said On The Couch.
“They haven’t been able to address it where they’ve been bundled out.
“Simon Goodwin said your vulnerabilities are exposed under the heat of finals footy and it came to the fore the last couple of weeks.”
Nick Riewoldt said the Dees’ inability to address their forward line problems was the reason they bowed out of the premiership race.
“This was the part really that cost them their season,” he said.
“They’ve got to fix their issues in front of the ball.
“They threw Petty forward and he looked good! He looked like a forward!”
“He looked like their best key forward since David Neitz!” Lyon added.
Lyon questioned if the call needed to be made to push Petty forward permanently and allow Joel Smith to step in as the replacement.
“They’re hard to find these blokes. I would have liked to have seen (Petty forward) tried at about Round 15.”
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