If The Smashing Pumpkins are to be believed, the world, indeed, is a vampire. And it sucked the life out of the Melbourne Football Club in 2024.
It’s been quite an interesting 12 months for Melbourne, hasn’t it?
That’s putting it mildly.
After a flag in 2021, Melbourne were supposed to be building a dynasty, but the media says that about every team that wins a flag, really, don’t they? Still, when you looked at Melbourne’s list and the style of footy they played, there was a very good argument that the Dees were entering a golden period.
However, there is a lot tarnishing the club at the moment.
Straight sets losses in 2022 and 2023 saw a team bundled out of the finals far too early and far too easily, but that paled in comparison to their 2024, which saw them tumble to 14th amid a wave of controversy, both on and off-field.
Joel Smith was banned after testing positive for cocaine. The Clayton Oliver situation effectively robbed the Dees of one of their most reliable assets, as he struggled with several issues prior to, and during the season. Angus Brayshaw, one of the bright lights for the club, was forced to retire due to ongoing concussion-related injuries, stemming from Brayden Maynard’s “smother” in the 2023 finals series. A Federal MP used parliamentary privilege (which is a joke, by the way) to make accusations about the club in regard to drug testing. The handling of Christian Petracca’s rib/lung/spleen injury was condemned far and wide. And finally, President, Kate Roffey stepped down to end the year.
And now for the bad news!
Haha, just kidding – it’s been a shocking time for Dees fans, particularly when you consider that this *should* be a period where the team is experiencing success. But the good news is that the core of the Melbourne list is incredibly solid, and when you have pressure like this levelled continually at your club, it can work one of two ways. Either people continue to jump off a sinking ship, or it can galvanise the group that remains.
It won’t really take long to find out which one it’s going to be.
It’s that time of year, already.
The break after Christmas and New Year is over. The holidays are finished for AFL players, and the hard stuff starts now. Yes, the teams had been training for well over a month prior to Christmas, but as we head into 2025, the stakes are raised, and the intensity increases.
This is where premierships are won and lost. This is where improvements are made and lists come together. New faces, new colours, old heads with renewed passion… so much feeds into the making of a contender. And as the days tick down toward the intra-club clashes, practice games, and eventually the real stuff, questions are raised about each team and how they’re going to perform in this new season.
And that’s where HB and The Mongrel come in.
We don’t do things by halves here, at The Mongrel Punt. When we do a season preview, we go all out to make sure it is the best, most comprehensive coverage you’ll receive. We pride ourselves on it. If you are going to read one season preview for your team, or any team, this series will provide it.
The way it works is as follows.
Each club has a minimum of 15 questions asked about the upcoming season, their coaches, their players, and their expectations. The answers are not glossed over. We dive deep on each and every one of them – some singular answers would normally be long enough for an entire column. The first five questions/answers are free for you to consume. The next 10-14 for each club are for our members, including a special appearance from Mrs Mongrel to throw her two cents in the mix.
Isn’t it a bit early for a season preview? Well, I suppose, but do you know how long it takes to write seven-to-nine thousand words? That’s 18 x 8,000… gets out the calculator… that’s 144,000 words. The average novel is about 85,000 words, so buckle the hell up with these previews.
Also, if there are any issues that arise after the publication of the preview for any team, they will be covered in standalone articles to act as additions to this preview.
You will not read a deeper season preview than this – I guarantee it. This is where we start the run to the new season, and believe me – nobody does it better than The Mongrel.
This season, we’re going in reverse ladder position. Four have been published prior to this, and now we come to The Dees.
Enjoy.
1 – WELL, LET’S START WITH THE BIG ONE – HOW BAD ARE THINGS AT MELBOURNE?
I’m guessing you know the saying by now – things are never as bad as they seem, and things are never as good as they seem.
So, if you subscribe to that school of thought, there is a chance things may have been blown out of proportion in regard to the club. You’d hope so, anyway.
When we look at the list of issues I covered in the intro, some can easily be written off as errors, or unfortunate results of other actions. Some, of course, cannot, but the Brayshaw and Petracca issues surfaced as a result of actions on the field. The Dees can hardly be held responsible for the injury to Brayshaw that saw him retire. The steadiness and versatility he provided the club was a huge loss, and one that will not be easily covered, even twelve months removed. Meanwhile, the injury to Christian Petracca turned out to be much more serious than first thought. The standard procedure for rib injuries is to see if the player is still able to play if it is believed there is no internal damage. Whilst the result of scans after the game proved there was significant damage, it was difficult to assess at the time. In hindsight, it was an error from the Dees medical staff to send him back out there, but it is not something that hasn’t occurred dozens of times over the journey. Initial boundary line tests are not going to show up a lacerated spleen and punctured lung. Others have played entire games with the latter.
But because it was the Dees, and there had already been a torrent of media attention on them, this really got blown up.
Petracca dismissed allegations he was upset with having to go back on. He had the following to say to Fox Footy.
“Hindsight’s a great thing,” he tells Fox Footy’s AFL360.
“I’m a competitor — I want to go back out there and try and compete. There’s so much adrenaline going through the situation: the game, 85,000 people [watching], playing against Collingwood in a big game — I think, in that situation, had I known it was a grade 5 spleen, there’s no way in hell I’d be going back out there, because we didn’t understand the severity of the injury at the time.
“I felt pretty sore out there, my breathing in some ways was affected a little bit — but nothing that I thought was life-threatening at all … When I was out there, all I wanted to do was just compete and put my team first. Some people call it stupid (and) some people call it brave — I just wanted to compete for my teammates.”
Of course, that led to allegations of players wanting out.
Oliver entertained the idea of playing for Geelong… because they have no off-field issues at all, right? Petracca shut down any talk of him waiting out… eventually.
What the Dees desperately need is a season of stability to keep the media throng from zeroing in on their club. They need Petracca healthy and happy with his footy. They need things to click on-field, as it is amazing how quickly success turns a team of apparently disgruntled players into a cohesive unit, and they need players who want to stay and be part of the club to come out and state it.
Yes, things are never as good as they seem, and never as bad as they seem, but there is another saying that the journos have adopted when it comes to the Melbourne Football Club and their current position – where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
It’s time for the Dees to hose things down and make sure that their club starts to do the little things right. From there, they still have the capacity to do plenty with this list.
And they need to, before they squander a period where they have a heap of A-Grade talent. Let’s hope it is not too late.
2 – WHAT DO WE EXPECT FROM CLAYTON OLIVER IN 2025?
We’ve been spoilt by what Clayton Oliver provided up until the 2024 season.
Four Bluey Truscott Medals as the Dees’ best and fairest, one of just three players to ever amass 400 or more contested possessions in a single season (and he has done it three times!), three All-Australian blazers, and two AFL Coaches Association Champion Player of the Year Awards, speak of a man that had the football world at his feet heading into last season.
He wasn’t the first to stumble over it and land on his face, and he certainly won’t be the last, but what it meant to the Dees is that they lost their prime mover, and their spark plug.
What we got from Oliver in 2024 was a watered down version. The hands weren’t quite there, he looked to be carrying extra weight, and the potency he had with his disposals deserted him. I’d say he was running at about 80-85% of his capacity, which was something very new for him, given his consistency over the previous seven seasons.
He was behind the eight ball from the outset, training away from the main group in an effort to get back to acceptable fitness levels, but the writing was on the wall early, and those who read it knew exactly what was going to occur.
Clarrie was always going to struggle through the 2024 season.
He still managed to collect over 23 disposals per game, but they largely consisted of hack kicks and misguided inside 50s that gave his forwards little chance. I don’t think Clarrie’s kicking has ever really been his strong suit, but there was a noticeable drop off in his execution in 2024, to the point it just looked messy and rarely damaged the opposition. His quick hands deserted him, as well, with his decision-making looking as though he needed extra time for perhaps the first time in his career.
In essence, that was not the Clayton Oliver the Dees were looking for, which begs the question; can he rediscover the form that made him such a formidable weapon?
On the upside, do you hear that?
Listen closely… listen for Oliver’s name on the lips of journos. Can you hear it? Have you read it?
No, no you haven’t, and that is a great sign. This time last season, Oliver was all over the papers, all over the radio talkback segments (for those silly enough to listen) and a common feature on the news. All for the wrong reasons.
This year… silence.
You know what that means? He is head down, bum up, and doing the work to right the wrongs of a season he called “a stinker.” And getting Clarrie back at his best automatically makes the Dees a couple of wins better, in my book.
So, is a return to the dominant, powerful midfielder that looked like he would be an all-time great on the cards?
Look, even if they get Oliver back somewhere in the vicinity of where he was in 2022, it’ll be a massive win for the Dees. Comparing that season to his 2024, he was +9.55 in disposals per game, and +4.22 in clearances. It was his play, and that of his running mate, Petracca, that made the Dees’ midfield so damn potent, and the good thing is that getting Oliver back to somewhere around that level would go a long way to re-establishing them as that potent unit once again.
The Dees ended up 16th in clearances per game in 2024. Even just with Oliver rediscovering that 2022 form, it would elevate them six places. That’s how important he has been, and could be again.
3 – IS TOM CAMPBELL ENOUGH OF A BACKUP FOR MAX GAWN?
About eight years ago, I traded a car in and bought what was, at least in my mind, a downgrade. It was supposed to be an upgrade, but it just didn’t feel like it.
You see, I loved my old car. Could take the roof off, it had a lot of grunt. Alas,I was well aware that it wasn’t going to cut the mustard with my lovely daughter on the way, so I had to trade it in and buy a more family-friendly car. And no, I don’t begrudge her for this. I do begrudge her when she “forgets” to empty the dishwasher these days, but that’s an entirely different story.
Anyway, that supposed upgrade of a car is something I’ve never really been pleased with. Despite it always doing the job and being a pretty good car, I have always felt it is a piece of junk compared to what I had.
That is how Melbourne fans would feel about anyone who is not a Hall of Fame ruck coming in as a replacement for an injured Max Gawn. In short, nobody can provide anywhere near enough to make this club feel everything is fine without their captain.
Above, we broached the subject of how bad things were at Melbourne in 2024, but one thing that has been continually glossed over by the media is that the club took a huge risk on running Gawn as a solo ruck, more hoping that he didn’t get hurt than planning anything decent to cover him.
Lo and behold, Gawn got hurt in Round 17, injuring an ankle. And what happened to the Dees?
They had to throw Jacob van Rooyen into the ruck, and rely on Harrison Petty as the backup.
They really paid the price in Round 19, with Gawn still on the shelf, as they ran into the two-headed monster of Sean Darcy and Luke Jackson, and those two had their way in the ruck and around the ground. Petty and van Rooyen combined for just nine taps, as the Dockers blew the Dees off the park.
The gamble failed.
So, seemingly having learnt their lesson, and with Gawn turning 33 just a couple of weeks ago, they recruited Tom Campbell to fill in should Big Max go down again.
Gawn missed a chunk of the December work due to a fractured larynx, which doesn’t exactly bode well, but at least they have got someone who knows how to take a ruck contest as a backup this season.
Anyway, I can’t see Campbell as anything but a stop-gap measure. He is contracted only until the end of 2025, and is 33, himself. The Dees have not exactly gambled as much this year, but nor have they invested in someone that can legitimately stand up and hold down a number one ruck role if the unthinkable occurs, and the captain is on the sidelines for an extended period of time.
Perhaps the Dees are just biding their time? I heard there is a new model coming out late in 2025 that could fill the void of the old car. It’s a White car name The Kalani.
When it arrives, maybe I’ll stop thinking about my old car. And maybe the Dees will finally have someone worthy of stepping into Gawn’s ample shoes.
4 – IS SHANE MCADAM THE FORGOTTEN MAN IN THE MELBOURNE FORWARD LINE?
He’s more like the forgotten man in the AFL, given how few people mention his name when it comes to the Dees.
The thing is, unless you watched the 2023 Adelaide Crows season, you really don’t know what the Dees have in McAdam. He is a versatile forward, who is able to mark overhead exceptionally well for a player his size, and has good goal sense. In a forward line with Bayley Fritsch, these two should be able to find space to complement each other’s games.
However, after recruiting him for the 2024 season, the Dees have received nothing from McAdam, with hamstring issues destroying his season.
So, the follow up question is what can he bring to a forward line that desperately needs firepower?
McAdam is a tough matchup. He is nimble, but will outmark most small defenders, so they have to remain attentive of him when the ball comes in long – he will fly and make them pay unless they give him the attention he deserves. He has two seasons (2022/23) where he had 23-25 goals, but I reckon he could do more than that.
His ceiling is probably around 30 goals, which is a handy number playing second-fiddle to Fritsch as an opportunistic forward, and he remains a handy ground-level player behind Kysaiah Pickett when Kozzie heads into the middle, and perhaps Charlie Spargo.
He is a player to keep a close eye on during the preseason, particularly when it comes to getting through games unscathed. After his disastrous 2024, he will be hell-bent on making an impression at Melbourne this year. And the Dees will be looking forward to getting something other than medical bills from him.
Signed until the end of the 2026 season, Melbourne need McAdam to stand up in 2025 and make a difference inside 50. When he does, he spreads the defence and gives the marking forwards a chance at a legitimate one-on-one contest.
And that is something that the Dees have been operating without for a little while, now.
5 – IS HARRISON PERRY IN DEFENCE THE RIGHT MOVE?
Yeah… because having him forward just wasn’t working.
Most of you are aware I am not a Melbourne supporter, but I am a footy lover, and when I watched Simon Goodwin consistently send Petty inside 50, only to see him flounder as a key forward and marking target, I genuinely wondered what in the hell the coach was thinking. He floundered so much, I heard they’re looking to cast him the Little Mermaid 3.
My daughter gave me that joke – this is what I live with. Also, did you know they made a second Little Mermaid? It went straight to DVD, apparently. Ariel’s daughter wants to live in the sea! What a plot.
Anyway, as a key forward, Petty averaged 0.45 goals per game in 2024. That’s horrible; twelfth on the team! He was second on the team for contested marks per game, but seventh for marks inside 50 – what does that tell you?
Every time I watched him out there, I was shaking my head. If it was painfully obvious to me that he needed to be in a different role, then I am guessing it was even more painful for you – the people who watched the team each and every week.
Why wasn’t it plain to Goodwin?
Of course, there was the issue of a lack of personnel to fill his shoes, and I’ll get to that in the next section.
Petty in defence is a different beast. A premiership defender, for that matter.
In 2021. The combination of Petty, Steven May, and Jake Lever underpinned the best defence in the league. Melbourne built their premiership on the back of their defence, and it is an aspect of their game that could be excellent again. Will it drive them back to a flag?
Probably not, but it won’t see them sitting in 14th place, either. A strong defence gives a team shape and structure, and having Petty back in defence allows Steven May to play a more expansive role. That can only mean good things for the Dees.
I expect to see a relieved Harrison Petty if he is permitted to play in defence this season. Despite the last couple of seasons, this is where he has looked most at home in blue and red, and I hope, for his sake, he gets the chance to demonstrate just why the Dees were so eager to keep him when the Crows came knocking a couple of seasons ago.
The next 14 questions are for our members. Option to join below.
This is just under a third of our preview. The rest is available exclusively to our members. People, we give value. No same old gabage you’re going to hear from ten others, taking turns in mimicking each other. No played out opinions. Thoughtful and comprehensive – that’s what we aspire to provide in these previews, and your support makes them bigger and better every year. Jump on board.
