MELBOURNE CEO Gary Pert had the opportunity to address the club’s members on Wednesday night, answering some common questions that had been raised by the Demons faithful.

“Quite a few came through to me specifically about the review that the club did at the end of the 2020 season,” Pert said at The Members’ Brief.

“And that was in reference to quite a bit of media reports last week, so I can understand why that’s a topic of discussion and interest for you.

“So, let’s go back to the end of the 2020 season where the club came out and the board asked me to do a review.

“We knew as a club that we had a talented player group, [but] we hadn’t made the finals and that was something that we wanted to change.

“I announced very clearly to members and transparently that the review was about actually making sure that we had the people and programs so that we could be playing our best football … to be back in the finals.”

The review required strenuous research which saw the club investigate all areas of the football department, with the goal to ultimately achieve on-field success.

“We even benchmarked the Melbourne Football Club – our football program – against some of the best and most successful programs in the AFL in the 10 years prior, to try to establish if there were some parts of our program that other clubs were doing better, or maybe even parts that we weren’t doing at all,” Pert said.

“At the end of the review we came out pretty clear about where we were at.

“We had a talented player group, there was no doubt that Simon Goodwin was the coach that we wanted to keep on driving this program forward, and I think he will continue to drive the program for quite some time.

“The review also established that we needed to put greater resources around Simon if we wanted to maximise the program.

“So, we made changes – we made changes to people.

“We all know now that Adem Yze was brought in; Choco Williams.

“We restructured the football department, so Alan Richardson’s role changed quite substantially so that his role was focused solely on the AFL team’s performance.

“It was about aligning our AFL program all the way through in every aspect of the program, to make sure we were performing at our best [in] every single game that we played in.

“And I think his influence has been very strong as a result of that change.”

While the changes in personnel and role adjustments were crucial, Pert believes one of the biggest learnings from the review came around player leadership.

“A big part of the review that came back was the best teams, the teams that perform consistently well over a long period of time, are driven by great player leadership groups,” he said.

“And the timing of this was at a period where the players were saying, ‘We want to be playing finals, winning finals and playing in a Grand Final. We think we’re good enough and we’re going to drive that. We’re going to drive the standards on and off the field,’ and I think we saw the results of that.

“And when I talk about the player leadership group, I know we look at Max Gawn and we look at Jack Viney, but that player leadership group is … not just one or two players and I think that’s made probably the biggest difference this year of anything.

“So all those changes were made.”

Now, over 12 months after the completion of the review, Pert reflects positively on the impacts of the club’s findings, and how that helped shape the Demons’ 2021 premiership.

“It was a difficult process,” he said.

“Any feedback given to me during that review process was explored, taken very seriously, but at the end of the day we made the changes, we came out clearly to our members and said these are the changes we’re making.

“Myself and the board – the board signed off on it – we stand by the process, we stand by the changes that were made and the difficult conversations that were had with the majority of the people in the department, … and we also stand by the performance outcomes and the changes we’ve seen since then.”

To hear more from Pert, watch The Members’ Brief below: