Saturday, December 8, 2012

Christmas gifts for all: Get tanking issue solved before New Year

It would be a good time for the AFL to finish their investigation and to release their punishment of Melbourne for tanking.  If sanctions are inevitable, December would be the ideal month to make the dees pay.  Neither Melbourne nor the AFL want the tanking issue still in people's minds when the season is about to begin.  And with Melbourne's constant onfield pain, only the most sadistic football supporters want to see them humiliated in public once again.  If they can get it out there now, it might well be all over by Christmas, and other scandals will wash it from the publics mind before the season starts.  And there will be scandals.  

Mark Neeld is right in that the tanking issue will probably not have much affect on the demons playing group as they train through summer.  With the discipline that they commit themselves to football, what player really has time to contemplate what is happening in the boardrooms of the club?  Whether the players suffer from the clubs further loss of credibility or not, they are out of excuses.  Melbourne's 2012 season was dismal.  Some people might remember Neeld's first few months as dees coach last summer, where every second day he was making brave statements about the dees being a tough team to play during his first year.  He even joked about ignoring the advice of media advisors when he honestly answered media questions.  His transparency and availability might have been refreshing then, but as the team sunk from loss to loss, his tough statements looked sad.  This scribe privately wondered if Neeld might have been better to wait for the dees to have some wins before befriending the media sharks.  He certainly learnt the hard way.

Neeld will hopefully be much more quiet this preseason.  Far from talking tough, he will definitely keep expectations low.  Read: when you’re playing in premierships, most sides (have players which) are around about the 100-game mark, and we’re far away from that, so we’ve just got to make sure it’s time spent really well."  Emphasising lack of experience and long term vision is an easy option for a coach, but some supporters have had just about enough of it.  If Neeld continues that train of thought, Melbourne supporters will remember the Bailey years, and the sense of dejavu would be unbearable.  

The tanking issue cannot and will not be used as an excuse.  The AFL hopefully will not take draft picks from the Melbourne.  If it did, the cycle of demon poverty would be amusing, if it wasn't so sad.  After a period of sustained success, call it the Daniher years, the team lost some champions, got a new coach, and went downhill very quickly.  At that time, it was the done thing, and many a famous club accepted the harsh reality of failure as a the first step to success.  Supporters did too.  High draft picks were seen as the best, if not only, way of getting back to the top.  The priority draft pick was an incentive to lose.  Melbourne did just that, contriving to win less than five games and getting said draft pick.  It was, cynically put, exploitation of a flawed system. And if players still tried their best at every contest, then surely it was legal.  But in a cruel twist, the player Melbourne lost so hard to win was taken from them by another 'playing god' flaw in the system, namely salary cap exceptions allowed GWS.  The draft picks have not brought success to Melbourne, quite the opposite, but still the demons will have to answer for tanking during that fateful year.  If Melbourne were successful, resentment would be rife, and the punishment for the tanking years would be harsh.  Because they are not, let's hope the punishment is reasonable.    

Because Melbourne, in contriving to lose games, have punished themselves to a far greater degree than any administrator could do.  They have disappointed supporters much more than simple on-field incompetence could ever do.  They have almost destroyed the faith of long term fans who wonder now if the club has any heart at all.  In an age of obsession with club culture, the tanking administrators have done more damage than a busload of drug addled players could do.  Forget the long suffering supporters.  Think about the players who were part of that dismal season. 

Players like Brad Green, Cameron Bruce and James McDonald had played in a Grand Final in 2000.  They were there when the dees went all the way to the last Saturday in September.  And then, as their careers were coming to an end, they were there to witness orchestrated losses.  Bruce left as soon as he could.  McDonald was mercilessly forced to retire, even though he was the captain and still a top 5 player and the heart and soul of the team.  Green hung around for a few more years of disaster, shafted out of the captaincy for two kids.  Now the connection with the most recent period of success is lost, and current players have no one to look to for leadership.    

Thankfully, Sydney has won the flag.  The idea that you MUST have top 5 draft picks to get to the top 5 a few years later has now been debunked.  There are many ways to win a flag, and hopefully no team will be given reason to lose a game again.  When Jimmy Stynes died last year, most demons fans thought the team would come alive out of pure passion.  They didn't.  The time for talk of the future is well over.  Neeld must put up or shut up and leave.  If he can't find ways to win games and be competitive in losing games this season then he can tell his story walking.  Melbourne have 11 players who have played over 80 games. Add to this Chris Dawes, captains Trengove and Grimes, and previous first pick Watts, and the whole looking to the future card looks a little bit weak.