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I know I've had a bit of fun at the Demons' expense this week, but I do think there's been a fair degree of overreaction to the club based on a single game.
Reasoned observers would expect that Melbourne has clear flaws that need to be worked through and it is noted that painfully few people were rushing to put the Demons in their predicted final 8's for this season.
I harbor some doubts as to the real extent of Melbourne's available talent, but the club's problems transcend this and have been decades, not weeks or months, in the making.
For any club to be successful, it has to be equipped to marry a strong level of available talent with associated quantities of grit (which is effectively just shorthand for physical and mental fortitude). Melbourne has rarely been seen as being well served in this latter area, except for during the John Northey years of the late eighties and early nineties when, unfortunately for Demon tragics, the club came up short for depth of genuine talent.
Yes, I'm saying there's a good deal of residual softness to this club, which reflects the decades of limited success experienced by Melbourne, but cannot be solely attributed to this lack of success. Both St Kilda and the Bulldogs have also endured lengthy unsuccessful stints, but - for the most part - I've rarely associated this with lack of fortitude, but moreso with limited available talent.
I well remember attending the round 1 game involving Melbourne in 2002. Melbourne won in a thriller, in a match where Demons' star David Neitz cleaned-up Hawk defender Luke McCabe, leaving him with a badly injured shoulder. There was much self-congratulation among Neitz and the Melbourne players over this incident, with Mike Sheahan writing a backpage piece the following day glorifying Neitz and waxing lyrical about the new tough and hard Demons.
I had no problem with the Neitz hit, which was fair, and the Hawk player was just unlucky to receive such a bad injury. I did have a problem, however, with a situation involving one of the biggest Melbourne players cleaning up the smallest Hawk player (focused head down over the ball) as being lauded as incontrovertible evidence of a club having metamorphosed into a hard and tough new unit. It was embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff.
Not surprisingly it was also well wide of the mark, as Melbourne is still struggling to find adequate levels of fortitude a decade later.
For all this, its a bit rich to be going so hard at Mark Neeld and essentially writing him off entirely after a single game played in anger. It appears difficult for the AFL media to function from week-to-week without aggressively generating perceived crisis after perceived crisis to gorge upon. Sometimes it turns out that the hysteria was warranted, but more often than not it doesn't.
I'd want to be giving him quite a few more games yet before passing judgment.
Reasoned observers would expect that Melbourne has clear flaws that need to be worked through and it is noted that painfully few people were rushing to put the Demons in their predicted final 8's for this season.
I harbor some doubts as to the real extent of Melbourne's available talent, but the club's problems transcend this and have been decades, not weeks or months, in the making.
For any club to be successful, it has to be equipped to marry a strong level of available talent with associated quantities of grit (which is effectively just shorthand for physical and mental fortitude). Melbourne has rarely been seen as being well served in this latter area, except for during the John Northey years of the late eighties and early nineties when, unfortunately for Demon tragics, the club came up short for depth of genuine talent.
Yes, I'm saying there's a good deal of residual softness to this club, which reflects the decades of limited success experienced by Melbourne, but cannot be solely attributed to this lack of success. Both St Kilda and the Bulldogs have also endured lengthy unsuccessful stints, but - for the most part - I've rarely associated this with lack of fortitude, but moreso with limited available talent.
I well remember attending the round 1 game involving Melbourne in 2002. Melbourne won in a thriller, in a match where Demons' star David Neitz cleaned-up Hawk defender Luke McCabe, leaving him with a badly injured shoulder. There was much self-congratulation among Neitz and the Melbourne players over this incident, with Mike Sheahan writing a backpage piece the following day glorifying Neitz and waxing lyrical about the new tough and hard Demons.
I had no problem with the Neitz hit, which was fair, and the Hawk player was just unlucky to receive such a bad injury. I did have a problem, however, with a situation involving one of the biggest Melbourne players cleaning up the smallest Hawk player (focused head down over the ball) as being lauded as incontrovertible evidence of a club having metamorphosed into a hard and tough new unit. It was embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff.
Not surprisingly it was also well wide of the mark, as Melbourne is still struggling to find adequate levels of fortitude a decade later.
For all this, its a bit rich to be going so hard at Mark Neeld and essentially writing him off entirely after a single game played in anger. It appears difficult for the AFL media to function from week-to-week without aggressively generating perceived crisis after perceived crisis to gorge upon. Sometimes it turns out that the hysteria was warranted, but more often than not it doesn't.
I'd want to be giving him quite a few more games yet before passing judgment.
