So it's goodbye to the only Melbourne coach you can see holding a premiership cup in colour. The timing of Simon Goodwin's departure was strange, and there's no guarantee that our future will be any brighter, but I think this is the best result for everyone. It's a shame he couldn't go out on his own terms instead of having the word 'sacked' plastered all over his coaching obituary, but ironically he departs after what could genuinely be described as a 'good win'.
From my perspective, the best tribute I can pay the coach is that by the time he took over we'd been through so much disappointment that I'd never have imagined writing about the departure of a premiership coach. We had stability after the Paul Roos rescue mission, but while a 2018-style finals run was perfectly imaginable, an actual flag just seemed ridiculous. Melbourne stopped winning them when there were only 12 teams, now you had to be the best of 18 - and at the time we were still patiently waiting for the Gold Coast/GWS takeover that had been on the cards since they got all the draft picks.
There were obviously mistakes on-field and off (I'm sure once the media has waited a respectful couple of days we're going to discover some alleged rippers that have been kept off the books until now), and there have been times during his term where we were rubbish, but nobody can take away from the fact that Goodwin was at the helm when 57 years of pain, agony, and occasional brushes with extinction ended. You don't have to be happy about how things have gone since, but if you don't appreciate his greatest moment, feel free to stop reading and stick your head inside the nearest piece of industrial machinery.
We shouldn't focus entirely on the events of September 2021, but it's a great place to start. Now it's all over I'd love to have an 'enthusiast topics only' discussion with Goodwin (the invitation to come over and watch the Grand Final replay on my couch is a real thing), and talk about how the coaching group kept everything together and focused in those mad few weeks. It's not just his achievement, everyone involved with the management of the playing and coaching group across those weeks is a hero, and denigrating the flag because it was played in Perth is like telling Buzz Aldrin the moon landings were fake.
You had players who'd spent the best part of two years being bounced around the country away from family and friends for weeks, dealing with COVID regulations across two states including the regular jamming of swab up nose, and having unprecedented spare time before the Grand Final to get nervous and cock it all up. All this while he was dealing with a massive dose of the shits. And what happened next needs no explanation, though this is worth watching again today:
I feel slightly jibbed that this only goes for 16 minutes, but we don't drive enough website/YouTube traffic to get the hour (+) it deserves. And if time allowed, I'd go into about 10,000 words of detail about the ups and downs of his time, rank every single match in order etc... etc... but now the interim senior coach is younger than me I've got to start looking for therapy sessions.
Going right back to the start, consider the actual, non-Damien Barrett variety sliding doors moment when Stuart Dew declined our kind offer to succeed Roos. Dew may have won more flags than Norm Smith as player and coach combined for all we know, but if he'd taken the job, the name Simon Goodwin would be as relevant to us now as Rhyce Shaw, David Teague, or Scott Watters. He'd have just been some bloke coming and going at another club while we had our own raft of problems to worry about. Now he's one of only four premiership coaches in our history.
There was another historical near-miss when Brenton Sanderson got the boot from Adelaide on the same day Goodwin was joining us. In a piece of none-more-Melbourne slapstick they couldn't reach him on the phone and thought the Crows had executed a last minute snatch and grab, only to find out that he was just unable to answer due to dropping the kids off at school. It's interesting that Peter Jackson later said they were looking for somebody to "build relationships and maintain relationships with the players", because for better or worse there's no doubt he smashed that KPI.
After the two year apprenticeship under Roos, Goodwin ascended to the top job in 2017 and we had our best year in a decade. Obviously, a lot of the ground work was done over the previous two boring-but-functional seasons, and yes we absolutely incinerated a chance to play finals with a start against Collingwood in the last round that didn't even qualify as insipid, but there was finally genuine excitement about the place again.
In the reviews from that year you'll still find the usual whinging, but the four game winning streak culminating in the McSizzle Miracle at Subiaco was the most fun we'd had in a long time. When we beat Brisbane in the second last round it left us near enough to finals for somebody to hit 'send' on thousands of printed booklets telling us how to get finals tickets, which arrived right after one of the all-time epic botches against a long-dead Pies side who turned up expecting to go through the motions and ended the first quarter five goals in front.
So that was a cock-up, but going into 2018 you had Brayshaw, Gawn, Hogan, Oliver, Petracca and Salem on the rise, McDonald had new life as a forward, and we'd swiped Lever from Adelaide, so on paper it could only get better. It's risky to trust Melbourne though, so while I tipped us to finish seventh, it wouldn't have been surprising if everything fell to bits again. By the time we'd gone down in a heap against reigning premiers Richmond to sit 2-3 people were already trying to sack the coach. Indeed, my post after that night was basically just "can we just not tip into crisis just yet please?" That was the night Hogan's Heroes got cancelled because a contestant landed on his head and I stick by my suggestion of replacing it with "Goodwin's Gripes", where fans could line up for a quarter time whinge.
Then, entirely out of thin air we kicked some ridiculous scores by our standards - 146, 159, and 146 in consecutive weeks. I think deep down Simon always preferred to win by defensive strangulation, but registering our first 100 point win in years, then backing that up with the annihilation of Adelaide that sent Don Pyke off the deep end was tremendous stuff. That year we were 25 goals clear as the highest scoring team in the competition without any one player kicking 50+ goals in the home and away season.
There's always somebody trying to sack the coach, and I'm sure you'll find evidence somewhere of these nervous people sharpening knives when it looked like we might blow it again at the end of the year but that win in Perth made sure of finals, and set us on the course for two of the great nights. Two of the most partisan MFC crowds you'll ever see in packed stadiums going off their collective tits as we made a Preliminary Final. That didn't go so well, and there was a bit of bonus coach questioning in an otherwise great finish to the year when they dropped Fritsch, but I doubt anything short of a meteor strike would've made a difference that day.
Then things went tits up for a bit, even after adding Steven May and ending the annual "is Hogan going back to Perth?" saga. Fair to say we were eventually declared winners of that trade by a landslide, but not until after suffering through an implosion, featuring seven losses on the bounce at the end and a 17th placed finish. Felt like death at the time, ultimately turned out to be an accidentally good thing by delivering us Pickett and Jackson but at the time it was real toaster in the tub stuff. I didn't doubt the top end talent, just what looked like wafer thin depth.
This was the first year where people outside the usual sack-happy lunatics started to get the shits with Goodwin, especially the press conferences where you could run a betting pool on whether he'd say "learnings" or "connection" first. I first declared myself 'off him' in July, but just wanted to see a bit more fire. Tip over a table, strangle a journalist with a microphone cable etc... But that was never his go, and it's better to be yourself than come across like a nutter by trying to put it on. Until his last words as coach, Goodwin spoke like somebody under heavy sedation, but it's not what we see that matters, as long as things are in control behind the scenes. It didn't feel like they were by late 2019. During our last home game Channel 7 had him on 'Under Pressure Cam', cutting straight to reaction shots whenever something went wrong.
We'd had a great time in 2018, but by now I was even less convinced we'd ever win a flag than I'd been when he started. In the last game of the year, I described him as looking "like Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant standing there with his joint hanging out, crying like a baby as his life goes to bits". Which might be a bit extreme, and we hadn't known him long enough yet to realise that he had Resting Concerned Face. I don't doubt his commitment to the players for a second, because about the only time they'd catch him smiling was when he interacted with them after a win.
This is my favourite non-Grand Final related one:Me: You're undefeated to start 2021
— AFL (@AFL) March 27, 2021
Goody and Jones: #AFLSaintsDees pic.twitter.com/wkIKWb5NEj
... and in the non-players department, remember when he uncharacteristically went off after a solid and important but non-thrilling win, annoying the shit out of Stone Cold Craig Jennings?
A little Saturday night emotion at Adelaide Oval. ✊#RaiseHell pic.twitter.com/M4VmgL9rmA
— Melbourne Demons (@melbournefc) July 31, 2018
Maybe Jennings will come back and try to build on his previous success as AFLX premiership coach? If you thought the old coach didn't show much emotion...
After three years in the job, there was a sense before the 2020 season went haywire for everyone that he was in trouble. My season preview post (remember when there was enough time for them?) opened with another round of "let's all calm down and stop trying to sack the coach". This was the year they did a big pre-season propaganda series about all our hard work over summer, and my key takeaway was annoyance that he put his foot on Jason Taylor's couch. More importantly for his job security, the board had released their seemingly ludicrous plan to win a premiership within four years, so if we started the season badly he was in deep shit.
Next thing you know, the season was on hold, then shortened, and all the Victorian teams had to go interstate for a few months. About the only people this was good for (other than owners of the Queensland resorts where all the players were kept), was under the pump coaches because no matter how bad things got nobody was getting fired under those circumstances. Besides, at that stage we didn't know if there would be enough money to keep on the lights on after getting home. The fact that we're now semi-casually handing over a mil to sack the coach is credit to how well we've done post-COVID.
Regardless of the excuses, things didn't look great midway through the year. In the post from a random mid-season game there's much pisstaking of his press conferences. Another reason the flag was good is that I have rarely felt the need to watch these since, win or lose. There's also a mention of my old theory that he was the first coach to have a better Plan B than Plan A, because around that time we'd often start games like death then come good as it went on before usually losing by a thin margin that could've been covered by not getting so far behind in the first place.
I don't know whether Goodwin was saved by a positive end to the year, but if there was ever a moment where you thought a coach in one of the hubs would find out he was sacked via room key deactivation it was when Glenn Bartlett forgot he was President and went full footy nuffy after a rancid loss. He wasn't wrong, but it wasn't very presidential, and may have contributed to a rift with the coach. I tried to link to an article on our website about this but got "request blocked", possibly as part of a legal settlement.
There's a view now that things were already building towards bigger and better things at the end of 2020, but after those bullshit back-to-back losses in Cairns featuring Brayden Preuss in a tropical downpour, we were getting the Caroline Wilson 'violently rocking a house of cards' treatment, including people trying to get Steven Smith to challenge for President. Goodwin had two years left on his contract so we'd need to take a bank loan to sack him anyway, but two wins to end the year and a narrow finals miss took the heat off a bit.
The end of that season also gave us this classic image, when he went to write something with his big textas after a goal, only to look up and discover we'd given it straight back.This may have also been his expression when wild behind the scenes shit started going down over the 2020/2021 summer. It started with unproven allegations about a variety of things that I won't go into here, and included alleged 'scenario planning' in case we had to ditch him.Not having any idea about this behind the scenes nonsense, I was more concerned with on-field performance and absolutely convinced we were heading for Yze by Anzac Day. Suffice to say nobody expected a 9-0 start, and after the usual mid-season ups and downs we were playing finals again. The famous win at an empty Kardinia Park gave us top spot, but even for a minor premiership winner we hadn't been that impressive during the year. This was a good side that deserved to be in the mix, but I still didn't believe it could end in glory.
Even after that workmanlike win over Brisbane in the first final my inner veil of negativity said Geelong would beat us in the Prelim, ruining the legacy of Gawn's goal at the same time. Then we unexpectedly went supernova, put on two of the great modern performances just when it mattered and won the lot. Which was nice. The idea that fans were cheated because it happened in Perth is painfully stupid. How do you know the same thing happens? If the conditions for playing in front of a crowd at the MCG exist, do we still win in Geelong and finish top? And do the finals go exactly the same way? No, so stop being obscure and accept that even if you wanted it to happen in a different way it was still a monumental achievement.
We extended our winning streak to 17 games before things temporarily went a bit wonky and Jake Melksham punched Steven May in the head, but never forget that we still ended that year by wrecking Brisbane and went into the finals as a serious chance of winning again. The problem is, by now Ben Brown's wonderfully timed brief run of fitness was well over and our forward line was in a state of disarray it still hasn't recovered from. The midfield and backline were still good, we just couldn't score enough. There was a moment in each of the 2022 finals where we'd almost done enough to win, but fell short both times. It was a blow but the infrastructure was still there despite increasing external noise.
When practically the same thing happened a year later (via the Brayshaw incident, and the all-time baffling choice to pick Josh Schache as the sub then not use him while Brodie Grundy was available) some people wanted to give him the boot. It didn't make sense to me, we'd still been a top four side across two seasons, so what difference did it make if we beat Carlton and it was us that got thumped by Brisbane instead? I had a lot of issues with how we'd gone out of the finals, but judging it all on the finals losses was silly.
I started to get frustrated in the second half of 2024 when he wouldn't stop playing Petty forward, and did objectionable stuff like picking Turner as the sub in must win games, but my appreciation for his part in the premiership was so great that I went into this season dying for him to come back from the dead (and as worked out midway through this season, no premiership coach has ever plummeted this far down the ladder and recovered to take the same side to a Grand Final) just to stick it up some of the rude, ungrateful people who were cheerleading his demise.
It didn't work, and once we'd torched the slight mid-season comeback this year, it was clear that the best thing for everyone was going to be a fresh start. No matter how much love there was between him and the players, we were doing the same thing every week and he looked out of ideas. After those bad results at the start of the year we've held together pretty well this season without winning a lot, but I sensed awful losses in our future and wanted him to go out with his head held high rather than being stripped of dignity then getting the sack.
Instead, the change we had to have came by surprise after an 83 point win. Even if he thought this might be where the season was heading, I bet he didn't see it coming when he saw Brad Green was calling on Monday night. His departure press conference was a bit weird. It would be on brand if he didn't want to make a statement, but it did come across as strange that Green did his bit then threw straight to questions. Unless it was a deep cut in joke about the time that goose Basil Zempilas forgot to call him up for the winning premiership coach speech. I don't think so, considering he had to bust in at the end just to make his final statement thanking the fans.
Other than him finally being able to admit that he hates driving to Casey, we didn't learn much. Obviously, nobody was going to ask spicy questions about off-field incidents (and it was an AFL press conference so you wouldn't have heard them anyway), so about the only thing of note was that he sounds convinced that the side is a lot closer to playing finals again than I do. His view has more credibility than mine, but it certainly explains why they've been so rigid in trying to finish this season like it means something.
I want to know if he's factoring Gawn, May, McDonald, Melksham, Viney etc.. into his analysis, because they're all key players now but could collectively go over the edge at any moment. We've got promising players coming up, but I don't know if there's enough to cover the nine players 28 and over in our side last weekend. If anything, I can see a rebound into the bottom of the top eight next year before a blowout after that. Unless the new coach can drag one more good season out of the group and use that as the lure to get free agents or trade in players who will make a serious difference.
As for the identity of the new coach, beyond the interim reign of Troy Chaplin (god, I wish it had been Choke Yourself With A Tie just for fun), I don't know what to think. Assuming we can't afford to pay off Richmond and get Yze back, or that he'd want to return anyway, the first big philosophical question is whether to go for experience or a first time coach. Both options can go wrong if you pick the wrong person, but I hope we haven't done this at an odd time just to try and get our hooks into somebody before others (most likely Carlton) turf their coach.
As long as the old 'no dickheads' policy is applied then I'll trust the process, but something in me says if thing are going south over the next couple of years it's better to have somebody who's been through all this before, not a first timer who could come in with great ideas and suddenly find themselves way out of their depth. Now that we'll be paying the ex-coach a million bucks to sit on the couch, and god knows what other contracted footy department members to go away, I don't suppose we could have a hot rookie coach and an experienced guru at his side?
So, after nine seasons and 202 games it's over. I feel bad for Goodwin, but at the same time he's got the monster payout and got to depart before it got really ugly so hopefully he'll be ok in the end. Regardless of how it ended, or what you think should've happened in recent years, all I can say is thank you Simon. No matter what anyone says or thinks, you helped make this happen and I couldn't agree with myself more...
It's been an up and down ride, but the uppest up was fucking tremendous. Change had to happen, but eternal respect for helping to make this picture a reality. https://t.co/WiZYK24AEA
— Adam 1.0 (@Demonblog) August 4, 2025