Trending
“The inconsistency in the team’s performance week to week, and sometimes quarter to quarter, is incredibly frustrating – and everyone whose heart beats true, including myself, are frustrated riding this roller coaster. In the last 24 hours many of you have voiced your disappointment and anger. We understand it and we acknowledge it.”
He added: “As a football club, we talk a lot about making our people proud to belong. I understand that following yesterday’s result and the season more broadly, we have not achieved that ambition this AFL season.”
Damning assessment: Max Gawn says the Demons are all talk when it comes to executing when the pressure is on late in games.Credit: Getty Images
As well as Goodwin, the board also heard from Darren Shand, the ex-All Blacks general manager who reviewed at Melbourne at the end of last year and has been consulting the club on culture and leadership since then.
Gawn was unsparing in his assessment of the Demons’ performance, in which they conceded a 46-point lead at three-quarter-time to lose by a goal after the siren. It was the biggest three-quarter-time deficit to be overturned in AFL history.
The pressure has been intense on Goodwin in a season when the Demons were expected to be finals contenders, only to lose their opening five games. They have now won only one game – against 17th-placed North Melbourne – in their past eight matches.
“We spent 10 minutes in the rooms before ‘Goody’ called us in,” Gawn told Triple M.
“We talked among ourselves for a little bit, and the mechanism of the last play [to] try to find out what happened. There’s been five times this year where we haven’t known how to win. Giants in the first game we lost by a kick-out [when the Giants went coast to coast]. Collingwood we lost by a ruckman [Gawn] trying to kick a torp across goal, and then last week against Carlton we stuffed up.
“Right now, we don’t know how to win in those close games, which comes down to resilience and ruthlessness.”
“It looks like we shut up shop [when you give up a 46-point lead], but you almost work harder in those games. We are trying our backsides off, and we all really want to win. We have to learn how to win. We will talk the talk again in training; all our talk is there, and then we get to the point, and we don’t do it,” he said.
In round one, the Demons led for most of the afternoon at the MCG, but lost by three points after a late goal from Lachlan Keefe, while last week they could not capitalise on Kysaiah Pickett’s five goals in an eight-point loss. They lost by a point to the Magpies on King’s Birthday, while they wasted opportunities in defeats to Gold Coast (19-point loss) and Adelaide (13).
The Demons have lost six games by two goals or less – four of them by under eight points.
The decisive free kick they conceded for a 6-6-6 infringement on Sunday came after the Demons had been warned of an earlier indiscretion in the second term.
“In the end, there’s 18 guys that have managed to stuff that up on the field, in terms of positioning with the 6-6-6. We’ll wear that. Beforehand, I think the boys just allowed the Saints to get a few early goals and then momentum is that hard to stop,” Gawn said.
“Coaches are in with the players – that’s a world-record loss. It’s a disappointing one.
Loading
“We played pretty well for the first three quarters, but they kicked two or three early in the fourth [quarter] and it’s pretty hard to stop momentum, especially the way the Saints were playing. We started to lose the centre bounce, and then when it’s three goals to play with that comeback, it’s extremely hard to stop. Leaders, most importantly, were responsible for a bit of that. I didn’t play my best last quarter.”
Board member Steve Smith returns from Europe next week and will take over as president at year’s end. Green publicly backed Goodwin during the disastrous start to the season but called for action.
CEO Paul Guerra was appointed in late April, but will not officially start until September.
“He [Goodwin] is my favourite coach and he’s a premiership coach. I find him extremely smart tactically and, in the end, he’s had us 50-points up against St Kilda, a team that we were down by 50 [points] in Alice Springs. He’s in it with us, but the last quarter is not solely on him,” Gawn said.
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.
“The inconsistency in the team’s performance week to week, and sometimes quarter to quarter, is incredibly frustrating – and everyone whose heart beats true, including myself, are frustrated riding this roller coaster. In the last 24 hours many of you have voiced your disappointment and anger. We understand it and we acknowledge it.”
He added: “As a football club, we talk a lot about making our people proud to belong. I understand that following yesterday’s result and the season more broadly, we have not achieved that ambition this AFL season.”
Damning assessment: Max Gawn says the Demons are all talk when it comes to executing when the pressure is on late in games.Credit: Getty Images
As well as Goodwin, the board also heard from Darren Shand, the ex-All Blacks general manager who reviewed at Melbourne at the end of last year and has been consulting the club on culture and leadership since then.
Gawn was unsparing in his assessment of the Demons’ performance, in which they conceded a 46-point lead at three-quarter-time to lose by a goal after the siren. It was the biggest three-quarter-time deficit to be overturned in AFL history.
The pressure has been intense on Goodwin in a season when the Demons were expected to be finals contenders, only to lose their opening five games. They have now won only one game – against 17th-placed North Melbourne – in their past eight matches.
“We spent 10 minutes in the rooms before ‘Goody’ called us in,” Gawn told Triple M.
“We talked among ourselves for a little bit, and the mechanism of the last play [to] try to find out what happened. There’s been five times this year where we haven’t known how to win. Giants in the first game we lost by a kick-out [when the Giants went coast to coast]. Collingwood we lost by a ruckman [Gawn] trying to kick a torp across goal, and then last week against Carlton we stuffed up.
“Right now, we don’t know how to win in those close games, which comes down to resilience and ruthlessness.”
“It looks like we shut up shop [when you give up a 46-point lead], but you almost work harder in those games. We are trying our backsides off, and we all really want to win. We have to learn how to win. We will talk the talk again in training; all our talk is there, and then we get to the point, and we don’t do it,” he said.
In round one, the Demons led for most of the afternoon at the MCG, but lost by three points after a late goal from Lachlan Keefe, while last week they could not capitalise on Kysaiah Pickett’s five goals in an eight-point loss. They lost by a point to the Magpies on King’s Birthday, while they wasted opportunities in defeats to Gold Coast (19-point loss) and Adelaide (13).
The Demons have lost six games by two goals or less – four of them by under eight points.
The decisive free kick they conceded for a 6-6-6 infringement on Sunday came after the Demons had been warned of an earlier indiscretion in the second term.
“In the end, there’s 18 guys that have managed to stuff that up on the field, in terms of positioning with the 6-6-6. We’ll wear that. Beforehand, I think the boys just allowed the Saints to get a few early goals and then momentum is that hard to stop,” Gawn said.
“Coaches are in with the players – that’s a world-record loss. It’s a disappointing one.
Loading
“We played pretty well for the first three quarters, but they kicked two or three early in the fourth [quarter] and it’s pretty hard to stop momentum, especially the way the Saints were playing. We started to lose the centre bounce, and then when it’s three goals to play with that comeback, it’s extremely hard to stop. Leaders, most importantly, were responsible for a bit of that. I didn’t play my best last quarter.”
Board member Steve Smith returns from Europe next week and will take over as president at year’s end. Green publicly backed Goodwin during the disastrous start to the season but called for action.
CEO Paul Guerra was appointed in late April, but will not officially start until September.
“He [Goodwin] is my favourite coach and he’s a premiership coach. I find him extremely smart tactically and, in the end, he’s had us 50-points up against St Kilda, a team that we were down by 50 [points] in Alice Springs. He’s in it with us, but the last quarter is not solely on him,” Gawn said.
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution
The Us Media 2025
