Freo fightback makes sure Dees are Gawn
NO Gawn, no Lewis, no Hogan ... no more excuses.
The enigma that is the Melbourne Football Club resurfaced yesterday like a wellworn nightmare with a very familiar conclusion.
Leading by 27 points in the dying moments of the second term off the back of hard work and quick play, a moment of lapsed concentration allowed Fremantle to sweep the ball forward.
As the time ticked down in the first half, the ball somehow landed in Lachie Neale’s arms and his goal after the siren must have frustrated the hell out of Demons coach Simon Goodwin. There were no boos at halftime, but there were plenty of “friendly fire” boos at three-quarter-time.
For in the half-hour that followed the long break, the Demons almost ground to a halt, their link-up work was as slow as treacle and they coughed up seven goals to nil in the third term.
And even though Melbourne came out with a different sort of intensity and mindset in the final quarter – regaining the lead with a Jack Viney goal at the 27-minutemark before relinquishing it with a Cam McCarthy major two minutes later and almost pinching it again with a late James Harmes kick – the real damage had been done the previous term.
Their two-point loss to a determined, more desperate Fremantle was the result that long-suffering Demons feared, and a few may have suspected.
Goodwin would have been livid with some of the efforts during that third quarter, with Triple M’s Brian Taylor saying it had as much to do with attitude as anything else.
“They have come out here with massive heads and they have been belted around the earholes,” Taylor said during the three-quarter-time interval after the Dockers had opened up a 22-point lead – a 43-point turnaround in a quarter.
For too long the Demons have given up losses in games they were meant to win.
That might be downplaying some of Fremantle’s influence from its stars including Lachie Neale, Nat Fyfe, Aaron Sandilands and David Mundy.
But in terms of maturity, and even allowing for those absent, this was a game Melbourne could have, and should have, won even without Gawn, Jesse Hogan and Jordan Lewis.
Gawn’s long-term absence is an ongoing concern, even though Jake Spencer – in his first AFL game in 594 days – was serviceable against the man mountain Sandilands, with the Dockers’ big man having 53 hitouts to 15.
But in many ways – and this sums up the Demons for more than a decade – this was not so much about manpower but mind power.