Out go the planned Notebook topics, probably never to see the light of day in a timely fashion.
In comes a list and style overview of Melbourne’s on-field prospects, hastily put together after Simon Goodwin was shown the door on Monday night.
This isn’t the place for all the off-field gossip, chatter about player movement just for the sake of it, and hypothetical trades.
It’s also not the place to look back. That has been covered elsewhere: sometimes poorly, and at other times very well.
Ideally what this post does is sum up where Melbourne are positioned for the short and medium term, along with providing relevant information – i.e. list demographics and trends – to help people make up their own mind as well.
We’ll start with a key quote from Tuesday’s press conference.
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“We still believe we’ve got a list that should be playing finals, we believe, as a board.”
Those were the words of Brad Green on Tuesday. It could be instructive for how Melbourne approach their next steps.
But shortly after the press conference, details started to ‘leak’, aka ‘insiders talking to friendly, uncritical ears’, about how Goodwin’s recent presentation to the board, with a mindset not a million miles away from the above quote, was actually received poorly.
A club who genuinely believes Green’s sentence at the press conference will use that mindset to inform their future list and game style decisions. A club more in sync with the leaked comments will naturally go in a different direction.
What goes unsaid though, as the big swing topic, is where the true internal opinions lie between public comments and the leaked, curated reporting.
Some of the chatter in published articles pointed to Melbourne having ‘14 players on the list 30 or over next season’, ignoring nearly half of those players as either career backups or relatively replaceable in their respective roles, assuming they all stay on the list next year. The quantity of older players isn’t the main issue.
What could turn into the main issue is whether this split in mentality leads to Melbourne shifting away from the subtle* changes already occurring this season.
Nearly half of Melbourne’s minutes this year have been taken by players in their age 25 year or below, putting the Demons mid-table, and in the vicinity of a few more teams. The issue of how many of those players can transition into permanent best 22 fixtures is a live one, but it’s not as if this is a decrepit list, or one where experience is prioritised over all costs.
Not everything has to be split down West Coast’s path (taking way too long to realise what had to be done) or Richmond’s (time for players to go!). There’s a needle – thin, admittedly – to thread in the middle.
(*Normal disclaimer: Obviously not subtle to the Melbourne fans who watch their team)
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For those who have missed it, the last five Notebook entries on The Shinboner, plus…
The 2025 Team Structures Page
Hawthorn’s shift, St Kilda’s list approach: Round 20’s Notebook
Brisbane testing tweaks, a crack in Collingwood’s midfield: Round 18’s Notebook
Essendon’s changes, Adelaide in the air: Round 17’s Notebook
Brisbane, Essendon, Geelong, GWS health checks: Round 16’s Notebook
Adelaide, Hawthorn, Melbourne, West Coast health checks: Round 15’s Notebook
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Harvey Langford, Xavier Lindsay, Caleb Windsor. Not to put too much pressure on two 19-year-olds and a 20-year-old, but the development of these three will determine how quickly Melbourne can fully regenerate their engine room.
The development of Langford has been solid, as touched on in the Round 5 Notebook, and Lindsay had a promising start before fading away as first-year players with his build tend to do; he still shapes as a key long-term piece.
Windsor’s second year hasn’t hit the heights of his first. To take a silver lining out of 2025, it’s now knowing what he’s definitely not: a half-back. Sometimes removing the unknown is useful down the road when moving the magnets.
Long-term, it’s easy to see Windsor and Langford as the one-two on-ball punch if they’re developed well; complementary skill sets suited to where the game is trending, with Lindsay riding shotgun as the consistent balanced presence, but probably better suited to the outside.
If we’re to assume Christian Petracca hangs around, situationally rotating between midfield and forward, Kozzy Pickett continues in his damaging mid-forward role, and Jack Viney isn’t going anywhere with his leadership – contracted until 2028 – it’s a promising first-choice group.
Finding a new coach who can use this base around the ball will be ultra important, given the same issues around lack of aerial forward talent:
It’s not exactly lighting the world on fire. Although the tweaks after the start of the season were noticeable – more on that in the next section – there’s only so much that can be done before hitting the ‘we need better players in the forward half’ brick wall.
For as impressive as Jake Melksham has been this season, if a nearly 34-year-old mid-size, primarily defensive forward has been the most targeted option inside 50 by a street this season, there are talent issues at play.
The complete unknown around the list demographics, structure, and setup, particularly closer to goal, is what influence the new coach ends up having on major decisions.
If a new coach is given carte blanche to influence future list decisions, with the mentality of putting all eggs in the ‘maximise the current group’ option, it can get very dangerous, very quickly.
But in theory, it should be where committing to a proper process helps immeasurably. Fresh eyes coming in, whether with prior head coaching experience or not, to present to Melbourne’s board should – should – provide plenty of options on what paths are realistically available, if they’re all considered at least.
There are always moves that few people foresee, whether it’s personnel or style, the latter of which we’d already seen some changes to this year…
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For those who have missed it, the last five North Melbourne match analysis pieces on The Shinboner, plus…
The 2025 Team Structures Page
North Melbourne’s Round 21 analysis v St Kilda
North Melbourne’s Round 20 analysis v Geelong
North Melbourne’s Round 19 analysis v Sydney
North Melbourne’s Round 18 analysis v Melbourne
North Melbourne’s Round 17 analysis v Western Bulldogs
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Melbourne have featured three times as a team in this year’s Notebook (four if you count a Langford individual focus).
In Round 5, it was all about, ‘hey, this isn’t working, change it up’.
“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.”
In Round 11, it was all about, ‘hey, there’s been some changes made, and this is how it’s working’, focusing on midfield structural tweaks – Pickett, namely – along with a couple of forward changes with the ground level players reaching their absolute capacity.
And in Round 15, the final sentence of their mid-season bye health check turned out to be prescient in an unintended way:
“It’s not an exaggeration to say how they approach their off-season could lock in their path for the rest of the decade.”
Since Melbourne resumed post-bye, with two wins and four losses of varying painful degrees, the theme has largely been constant.
The tweaks to try and open up the scoring, creating more chances to offset the talent deficiency, has left them vulnerable defensively. In many ways it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
On one hand, if Melbourne continued to play the same way as previous years, they wouldn’t have scored enough and lost in grinding fashion. Except for the Carlton game, which is contractually obliged to always be low scoring and tight regardless of each team’s form.
In the last few weeks, even though the Dees have scored more, and it’s been undoubtedly better than the alternate, it’s led to a leakier team, more vulnerable to big runs of goals against when the tide turns.
| Melbourne’s offence | Round 1-14 | Round 16-21 |
| Points per 100 clearances | 82.7 | 110.4 |
| Points per 100 turnovers | 66.6 | 80.1 |
The St Kilda game obviously takes the headlines, but there was also the first quarter against Gold Coast, a 36-point deficit that quite easily could have been 50+.
Against Adelaide, from roughly the mid-point of the second quarter to the mid-point of the third, the Crows piled on 6.7 to 0.1.
It just comes back to the same theory: a better forward half allows those tweaks to continue without forced compromises elsewhere.
Whoever the new coach ends up being has the task to keep a team evolving, manage what comes across as differing philosophies from higher up, and avoid the pitfalls of other teams who hold on to prior glories too long. It’s not the easiest of roles.