Melbourne Demons 2020

[bresker]

Great list. Prime age/games bracket. Awful coach. Goodwin has no idea.

Need a KPF pretty badly, my personal thought is that Tom McDonald’s 2017 is going to be an exception and not a rule. Perhaps Jenkins.

Outside speed as well. Not sure why they weren’t chucking everything at Brad Hill.

It’s all pi**ing in the wind till that moron gets out of the chair, though.

From the outside, it seems like he's a tough-love, Sergeant-Major type who keeps his distance from his players. Interesting to see that McCartney was pushed out the door- many of the Bulldogs players couldn't stand him. Some of his end of year reviews turned into shouting matches.

On the field, it's apparent that the old-fashioned 'go in hard, win the ball first and go from there' mantra was in play last year. No point in winning the ball if your skills are abhorrent. And there's no way professional footy players skills are actually that bad; I suspect that they're terrified of making mistakes so they f**k things up.

I agree, a change of coach will work wonders. Bring in someone who can have a laugh and not take things too seriously. This will be Goodwin's last season if he lasts that long. It would be a shame for the Demons to waste these golden years.

 

[nut]

Paul Roos’s legacy lives on. The foundations are so strong that they have to recruit every man and his dog into the club... lol

 

[Bazza97]

It am not sure whether 2018 was an aberration or whether 2019 was. Which was the real Demons?

Injuries plagued the club in 2019, but the drop off in skills was disproportionate.

9-12 in 2020 for me.

I'm confident that we can't do any worse than this year. For mine, the question is how much improvement we'll see. The consensus in this thread and on the ladder predictions thread is that we'll finish between the 9th-12th range which I think is fair. I'm leaning towards us returning to the finals next year, I think we're good enough. We'll see what eventuates but my range for where we finish in 2020 is somewhere between 5th-12th.

 

[Bazza97]

I think they can bounce back in a big way.

Need to find a greater balance with their midfield, and Langdon in particular will help with that.

Tomlinson also a good addition, and Elliott may be as well.

The midfield additions of Langdon and Tomlinson will be nice. Think we've now been ruled out of the race for Elliott. Would've been a good recruit. We lack talent and quality in the small forward department so that's an area we need to improve. We've got a few role players in that department which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm happy to have one or two of them in the side. I haven't really followed the draft but I feel we should be looking at recruiting a mature-aged small forward in the state leagues who has got the talent to contribute immediately.

 

[tiger_tough]

Langdon and Tomlinson will help because at the very least that's 2 blokes that won't get sucked into packs like the rest of their midfield does. Not sure either will help with the teams horrendous foot skills and decision making though. Brad Hill would've been perfect. Elliot would've been a great get up forward too.

If they can improve their ball movement then Tmac will be a more than handy key target as he was in 18'. Not sure Weideman has it in him.

Can't believe they're letting Frost go. A back 7 of Frost, May, Lever with Hibberd, Jetta, Hore and Salem has great potential. Haven't seen much of Petty and don't rate Oscar at all.

They have a very good 18 or so but lack depth. Decent run with injuries and I reckon they'll finish anywhere from 5th-10th.

 

[Sirlemsip]

I'm confident that we can't do any worse than this year. For mine, the question is how much improvement we'll see. The consensus in this thread and on the ladder predictions thread is that we'll finish between the 9th-12th range which I think is fair. I'm leaning towards us returning to the finals next year, I think we're good enough. We'll see what eventuates but my range for where we finish in 2020 is somewhere between 5th-12th.

You would need to do worst than GC next year to manage that... even the most pessimistic footy fan wouldn't think that was a likelihood.

I personally feel there will be an 'improvement' to get you to that 10-12 wins area where you are knocking on the door of finals. Part of this will come from the softer draw of a bottom 6 side, but hard to see many of your players performing 'worse' next year with the exception of the few older guys (e.g. N.Jones) which will be based more on age.

 

[Madtiger2006]

Total rebuild. 5 years of drafting. They'll make the 8 in 2030

 

[Cotchins Hair Piece]

Do you need to dribble crap like this in every Dees thread?

Lyk wot mayt..? As long as dumbasses keep mentioning ‘bath water’ yes I do.

 

[Cotchins Hair Piece]

Total rebuild. 5 years of drafting. They'll make the 8 in 2030

Nothing like being a bit humble aye bro?

 

[Bazza97]

You would need to do worst than GC next year to manage that... even the most pessimistic footy fan wouldn't think that was a likelihood.

I personally feel there will be an 'improvement' to get you to that 10-12 wins area where you are knocking on the door of finals. Part of this will come from the softer draw of a bottom 6 side, but hard to see many of your players performing 'worse' next year with the exception of the few older guys (e.g. N.Jones) which will be based more on age.

Indeed, a heck of a lot would have to go wrong for us to be even worse, I don't see it happening. I'm open to the possibility we might only see minimal improvement but I don't think that will be the case. We've seen plenty of teams over the years rebound after a bad year, no guarantees of course but we should be a much better team next year. However, it's possible that might not be enough to make finals though. There's plenty of teams who are capable of making the top 8 next year, I'd even say that most teams at their potential could make it next year. But yeah, I think we've got enough quality in our team to change our fortunes in 2020. Wouldn't put it past us becoming one of the better teams in the comp next season. We've seen a lot can change in one season, whether it's a team going from good to bad or bad to good.

 

[tiger_tough]

Lyk wot mayt..? As long as dumbasses keep mentioning ‘bath water’ yes I do.

Didn't jordan lewis come out and say on 360 that the group may have 'just expected it to happen' this year? Is that not a pretty good translation from drinking the bathwater?

Edit - it was ...."players may have come back with the wrong attitude"

 

[schmuttt]

There's pessimism and then there's just ridiculous, this is the latter.

I hope you’re right but I doubt it. Everyone talks about how we were in a lot of games this year but forget 4of our 5 wins were decided by under two goals.

 

[Damon_3388]

they have to go back to square 1
and by that I mean all the ruck contests ie (centre bounce , ball ups and thrown ins)

Think of Sandilands at peak, Freo really struggled to capitalise over a number of seasons

Now we have Gawn dominating all forms of the ruck and not just winning the hit out count but putting so many to advantage
and his side not able to make the most of it

Gawn's dominace is so obvious the other 17 clubs have studied it in detail and watched how others neutralize that part of Melb.s game

get that right and all of a sudden the rest of the team will look a whole lot better

I think the fact that Gawn almost doubled his clearance numbers this season was telling (4.95 per game in 2019, as opposed to 2.64 per game in 2018). He's not only having to win the tap, but then follow up and win the ball at ground level too. His workload is enormous, perhaps too great.

I guess the question is, is he going after those clearances out of necessity, or as part of their gameplan? Or should he lay out a bit more and trust his teammates and let the Demons' many inside mids just do their thing, and focus more on support work and blocking and tackling around the stoppages (given that the Demons had trouble going both ways in the middle this year)?

 

[Bazza97]

Langdon and Tomlinson will help because at the very least that's 2 blokes that won't get sucked into packs like the rest of their midfield does. Not sure either will help with the teams horrendous foot skills and decision making though. Brad Hill would've been perfect. Elliot would've been a great get up forward too.

If they can improve their ball movement then Tmac will be a more than handy key target as he was in 18'. Not sure Weideman has it in him.

Can't believe they're letting Frost go. A back 7 of Frost, May, Lever with Hibberd, Jetta, Hore and Salem has great potential. Haven't seen much of Petty and don't rate Oscar at all.

They have a very good 18 or so but lack depth. Decent run with injuries and I reckon they'll finish anywhere from 5th-10th.

Yeah, Hill would've been the ideal wingman for us.

I'm backing in T Mac to get back to his 2018 form, he still had a few very good games this year but he needs to get that consistency back and I think he will. For mine, he's too good of a player to carry his overall disappointing form in 2019 into 2020. On Weideman, I'm not entirely sold on him establishing himself in our forward line. I think he's doing ok atm, but yeah I'd like to see more improvement from him next year. I quite liked the glimpses I saw from Petty late in the year playing up forward. Ideally, I'd like to see Petty and Weideman competing for that 2nd key forward position in 2020, but with Frost most likely leaving, we might have to play Petty down back.

I'd prefer to have Frost stay, he has moments where he's very good and very bad, but overall I like him in the team. I had him in my best 22 going into 2020. And yeah, that back 7 you mentioned is what I had in my best 22 and I thought it's got the potential to be a pretty good unit. The club rates Oscar a lot more than we do, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see him start in round 1 next year. If he is one of our preferred options to take the key defender position, I hope he plays like he did in the first half of 2018, from what I remember he actually did a pretty good job for us in that period.

 

[caloschwaby]

A big part of the drop was failure to adjust to new 6-6-6 rule

Didn't affect the other 3 prelim finalists at all if not as much as it did Melbourne, so not sure if that could be a big reason.

 

[Dez!]

Didn't affect the other 3 prelim finalists at all if not as much as it did Melbourne, so not sure if that could be a big reason.

Given that we liked to have two extra players coming into the center square contest off half back it was affected us greatly but mostly it changed our defensive set-up which was already significantly weakened by not having May/Lever/Jetta/Hibberd for large chunks of the season.

A full pre-season will do great for Melbourne, there are things that need tweaking and improving of course but simply having our list get a full pre-season and available to play will improve us significantly.

 

[Sirlemsip]

Pending trades and drafting, it is pretty difficulty to call out any club other than Gold Coast as having 'no chance' to make the 8 next year.
The next weakest batch of clubs would be North and St Kilda - but even they have a small chance.
Blues and Swans should improve, Demons should improve a lot, Freo will have a new coach so anything could happen. All of the other clubs were in the mix for the 8 already.

Tigers, Giants and Eagles (w Kelly) would be expected to get to Prelim week at this stage, but beyond that 2020 will be very even and could be a more interesting year than 2019.

 

[Gysberts2Bate]

I don’t see them as a finals team. All year the talk has been about this just being an off year. IMO the aberration was actually 2018. When you go deeper you actually see it quite clearly, in 2017 let’s not forget they were earmarked to make finals & didn’t, same as this year!

We were a better side in 2017 than 2018 which shows you have NFI

 

[kaiserchief13]

Even in 2018 they only had a good 2 games really and they just happened to be in September. Even at their best they're a bottom of the top 8 contender. I doubt they'll make the 8 next year

 

[cougar000]

With a good forward line set up the amount of times they went inside 50 this year might have been a bit different the forwards were completely missing but saying that the delivery in wasn’t great either. Correct both these and will bounce. That’s my opinion anyway.

 

[Captain_Bender]

Lyk wot mayt..? As long as dumbasses keep mentioning ‘bath water’ yes I do.

Just face it mate your players drank their own bath water, you don't need to be insecure over it

 

[Dez!]

Just face it mate your players drank their own bath water, you don't need to be insecure over it

I mean if you were a simple-minded fool this would be what you say.

 

[Sonny Bonds]

Even in 2018 they only had a good 2 games really and they just happened to be in September. Even at their best they're a bottom of the top 8 contender. I doubt they'll make the 8 next year

Beating WC in Perth and smashed GWS in the last two rounds.

 

[Bazza97]

Pending trades and drafting, it is pretty difficulty to call out any club other than Gold Coast as having 'no chance' to make the 8 next year.
The next weakest batch of clubs would be North and St Kilda - but even they have a small chance.
Blues and Swans should improve, Demons should improve a lot, Freo will have a new coach so anything could happen. All of the other clubs were in the mix for the 8 already.

Tigers, Giants and Eagles (w Kelly) would be expected to get to Prelim week at this stage, but beyond that 2020 will be very even and could be a more interesting year than 2019.

The comp is getting more even. Brisbane finished bottom 4 last year and ended up finishing top 2 at the end of the H&A season. Before that, it would've been a while since a team made the finals after finishing in the bottom 4 the previous year. I think it's quite possible that we see one or two teams that finished bottom 4 this year make the finals next year. I reckon it's not beyond a team like Carlton making a big jump and possibly finishing top 8. Sydney could possibly rebound. Melbourne is the other one, we saw what they did the year before, so for mine it's possible they could seriously improve and become one of the better teams in the comp. There's a lot more quality and potential in the teams that finished bottom 4 this year than in recent years IMO.

 

[master bate]

Unfortunately Melbourne couldn't afford (both financially and culturally) to keep going down the long rebound path when Roos came on board. That's why you get a Paul Roos!

Traded a 2nd round for Vince, did the Kelly for Salem, Tyson deal (including a pick 20 for god knows what), traded picks/list spots for Hibberd, Melksham, Garlett, Bugg, etc etc. Gave up a lot for Oliver. (Gave up a lot for Hogan in the day). Really that build of the list peaked in 17. Those deals came home to cost in 2018 when the undercurrent of talent wasn't there.

The top line of talent: Gawn, Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Salem, May, Lever, Fritsch, Harmes, Tom McDonald is still good and even the guys who had down years this year mostly through injury should bounce back.

Unfortunately the recruiters and list management put a lot of apples in building from the contest out and they've just whiffed on a lot of outside run/flanker talent. The guys meant to play those spots - KK (injured), Hannan (injured), Vandenberg (injured) and missed draft picks just haven't been good enough.

Goodwin himself actually crafted a game plan for 16-18 based on changing the angles and using the corridor with kicking as well as winning contests and an aggressive zone backline. We gave Adelaide a touch up in 17 but struggled against any side that won the midfield battle. Unfortunately the good results last year hid a lot of the structural weaknesses of the game plan and list and I think it's more of a 2-3 year turnaround than a 1 year blip but there's still a lot to work with and that includes the coach.