There are two winless teams remaining in the league, with both taking slightly different routes to get here.
This week’s Notebook focuses on West Coast and Melbourne. There’s a look at what their most pressing need is now, and how it could influence things down the track.
We’ll start with the Eagles before moving on to the Demons.
—
The Patreon is up and running once again for 2025, which you can find right here. The three tiers are much the same as previous years, with refined features for the top two.
Patreon subscribers get early access to the Notebook each week as part of their benefits for signing up.
In addition to Patreon, you can find me on Twitter – and also Bluesky, where vibes are much more pleasant and there’s much less hate. It’s nice.
—
West Coast
To use a technical term … hoo boy.
The line between using moments as teaching tools versus sending lambs to the slaughter is a thin one, and we saw that on Saturday against Carlton.
Without Elliot Yeo (injured) and Tim Kelly (dropped), with Harley Reid moved behind the ball, and against a Blues outfit whose sole dimension (for the time being) is to try and overwhelm at the source before haphazardly moving forward, Andrew McQualter’s first-choice on-ball unit was Jack Hutchinson (ninth game, 23 years old), Clay Hall (sixth game, 19 years old), and Tom Gross (second game, 18 years old).
Against a better team, or even just a Carlton outfit in above average form, the scoreboard would have rivalled the 171-point loss to Sydney in 2023. At Adelaide Oval the inside 50 count was 73-35, clearances 32-18, contested possessions 136-77, and total disposals 421-281. The key point here is it was largely by design. No one in the box would have thought their selected team was a realistic chance of getting close to Carlton.
The hope is these lessons taught early manifest with benefits down the track. In the immediate term though, the most important piece in this process of discovery* is finding – quickly – what I like to call the ‘minutes eaters’.
(*The term was flagged in the pre-season over/under wins piece, which I’m not linking to out of shame for how some of the predictions are tracking)
In these early stages of a full rebuild, arguably the most important task is to identify players who can play the same role every week. They can be very good players, or they can just be ho-hum, standard B-graders who other clubs wouldn’t give a second thought to if they were available.
(Side point: When a team gets this wrong, they add a couple of years – at least – to their list build. Exhibit A: The Kangaroos of North Melbourne)
The easiest example to point to is those slightly past their prime veterans who are still more than capable, but there’s also benefit in leaning on internal list solutions to chew through 15-18+ games for a couple of seasons while performing serviceably at best.
As cold as it sounds, they’re basically the placeholders, protecting the next crop until they’re ready. Sometimes parts of the next crop are ready to be thrown in straight away, but others need nurturing, which is where these types of experienced hands come into play.
But either way, in West Coast’s situation, they need to have at least a couple of pillars across every line who merely can carry out a basic role each week, or even just scratch and claw to be at AFL standard more often than not. If we think back to the mini purple patch (relatively speaking) early last year, the younger players were able to carry out their roles a bit better because they had veterans as shields.
Now flash forward to what we’ve seen so far this year. Jeremy McGovern has missed the last fortnight, Tom Cole and Kelly were dropped for the Carlton game, Reid is languishing behind the ball where he’s not suited, Yeo has missed the whole season, Jake Waterman missed three games, and magnets are shuffled repeatedly in-game to the team’s extreme short-term detriment.
It’s why we’re seeing some of these mistakes, passages where the simplest of simple reads are misinterpreted, or we’re left with horrendously outmatched moments like a debutant playing on the reigning Coleman Medallist with next to nothing in the way of help.
Even if some of these decisions work out down the line, the longer this state of flux persists, the more there’ll be consequences down the line. Consequences we can’t see right now* in terms of player development.
(*Exhibit A: The Kangaroos of North Melbourne)
Because so far this year West Coast have handed more than 41 percent of their minutes to players in their age 22 year or under, comfortably the most in the league. It’s a large increase on 2024, where they sat at about 31 percent. That extra 10 percent has almost completely been taken from the age 29 year and over group.
Obviously West Coast had to get younger. That much is indisputable. But getting younger and younger for the sake of it doesn’t win anything. Apart from unwanted records*. Once the minutes eaters are in place, things can start to progress but until then we’ll see more of what happened against the Blues.
(*Exhibit A: The Kangaroos of North Melbourne)
—
For those who have missed it, the last five posts on The Shinboner, plus…
2025’s Team Structures Page, now updated!
North Melbourne’s Round 5 analysis v Gold Coast
Minutes played by age: Round 4’s Notebook
North Melbourne’s Round 4 analysis v Sydney
Method shifts: Round 3’s Notebook
North Melbourne’s Round 3 analysis v Adelaide
—
Melbourne
If I can read AFL Tables correctly, Melbourne are 5-15 over their last 20 games, with 10 of those 15 losses by 35 points or more. It’s sub-optimal.
In the pre-season Look Ahead, the Demons’ question was based around who they prioritise. Will they make room for the next batch of players, can they take prominent roles, and whether it forces a change as a result.
Then it finished with this…
It’ll be an under the radar subplot to the season, although it could burst through if Melbourne get off to a slow start and pressure starts to influence decisions.
…not thinking the Dees would get hammered four times in a row and fast track discussions around everything. They lost by 10 goals to North Melbourne!
To answer the Look Ahead question, Melbourne have looked to either integrate younger players or give increased roles to established players. Whether it was six debutants (five AFL, one club) in Round 1, carving out on-ball time for Harvey Langford, giving Xavier Lindsay wing time on debut and then off half back, trialling Matt Jefferson before his hand injury, and looking to Jake Bowey more often from half back, it’s clear there’s a focus on moving forward which should be highlighted and commended.
But where West Coast’s immediate issues come from figuring out what to implement in the first place, Melbourne’s issues largely stem from what they’ve traditionally implemented no longer being fit for purpose, regardless of personnel.
Functioning teams don’t allow their opposition to have 165 marks in a game as Geelong did in Round 4. It was the highest single-game tally in the league since late 2021 and in the moment it felt like the Cats could have had 200 if they pleased.
Functioning teams aren’t 18th for retaining possession from inside 50s and 18th for scoring shots per inside 50.
Functioning teams – with a midfield that should still be good, albeit past its collective peak – don’t lose stoppages at a rate bottom of the league in the non-West Coast division or concede from those stoppage losses at a bottom four rate.
The defensive system isn’t working. The midfield setup isn’t working. The forward group, who need the most help from the other two lines, definitely isn’t working as a result. It’s not an exaggeration to say no part of the team system is working on either side of the ball.
When talking about veterans in any sport, the cliché is the end comes fast. For this Melbourne system, strictly talking about how they set up week to week, the end is now.