After Mick departed, we dusted ourselves off, the TV vans disappeared almost immediately from our car park, we breathed a quick sigh and got back to work, preparing for our match against Sydney.
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Melbourne captain Max Gawn – one of my all-time favourite AFL players – made a similar observation last week as his players moved on after the abrupt sacking of their coach, Simon Goodwin.
Looking in from the outside, it appeared the Demons players, especially the senior core, were on good terms with Goodwin. And why wouldn’t they be? He’d been there for 11 years, nine years as senior coach, and lifted them from the perennial cellar dwellers to the very top – a drought-breaking premiership in 2021.
That would have made those feelings more acute.
On a day-to-day basis, most AFL players these days are much closer to their assigned line coach or assistant coach than they are to the senior coach.
The best senior coaches are not micromanagers, they see their role as an over-arching one. They put frameworks in place that allow the assistants, and most importantly, the players to take control of the team’s destiny.
But for that to work, the players must have absolute belief and trust in their coach, and so it makes sense for their to be a void and a sense of loss when someone you are so invested in departs suddenly.
Although there was some speculation about Goodwin’s future, the swiftness of his sacking blindsided the footy world. While I’ve no doubt the Demons players would have been shocked when he did get the flick, I hope the senior players were kept in the loop and had some awareness that this decision was possible.
Gawn, Jack Viney and Tom McDonald were at the club before Goodwin arrived and still there when he left. They’d been with him in the dark days, bought in to his vision for the club and saw it realised. They might not have expected the decision to be made last week, but it would be disappointing if those senior on-field leaders were caught completely off guard when Goodwin’s time was called by Melbourne’s board.
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The sense of guilt most players feel when their coach gets sacked is a natural reaction, I think. Even if a player privately thinks a change of coach might benefit their career, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s results that cost coaches their jobs, and, ultimately, it’s the players who are responsible for results.
But if you’re going to dwell on results, be sure to take the bad with the good. Melbourne’s players, especially those who were there for the bulk of the Goodwin years, could do a lot worse than reflect on where the club was when he started and where he got them to in 2021.
Zach Tuohy retired from the AFL in 2024 after 288 games for Carlton and Geelong. He played in the 2022 premiership for the Cats.
