COACH Paul Roos didn’t mince his words when he described his side’s defensive effort, following Melbourne’s 45-point loss to Port Adelaide at TIO Traeger Park Oval on Saturday.
“We were terrible defensively,” he said adamantly post-match.
“It’s probably been a trend in our losing games. Young players get energised by scoring and then they forget about the other aspects of the game. Pre-game [on Fox Footy], [I] spoke about that with Brad Johnson and Lynchy (Alastair Lynch).
“Everyone’s excited by how much we’re scoring, which is great, but I think there is only one indicator of success that’s been consistent for the last 20 or 30 years and that’s the top defensive teams win premierships. For us, it’s about pulling it back and [finding] balance, but that’s a work in progress.”
When posed with the notion that his team had taken its attacking style too far this season, Roos said “something suffers at times”.
“It’s a natural instinct of being a footballer – you naturally get energised [attacking]. When they come into AFL football, they’re all ball winners and you very rarely recruit someone because they’ve made 15 tackles and 13 spoils and six smothers,” he said.
“The hardest thing to teach is defence, no doubt. It’s not them getting ahead of themselves – it’s just the natural tendency and you’ve got to keep pulling it back.
“It’s less rewarding … when you make a tackle or you stand in the right place defensively. So that’s our challenge – we’ve got to make sure we get the balance right. We’ve just swung too far the wrong way. You can still see we can score, but you’re not going to win too many games letting the opposition kick 18 goals.
“We know that we’re still pretty young and we’ve still got to educate them and we’ve got to teach them. You never know when you turn up to a game what it’s going to look like.”
In the wash-up, Port Adelaide’s size and strength around the clearances were telling. But Melbourne was also disappointing around the contest and allowed the Power to move the ball into space.
Port Adelaide then used its running game and was able to score with ease. This came about because of Melbourne’s lack of defensive actions across the board.
It resulted in Melbourne’s lowest pressure and defensive indicators for the season, highlighted by its disappointing tackling.
For ruckman Max Gawn, it was a frustrating situation, as he was part of the side that allowed it to happen.
“I look at it probably as a supporter – and we actually saw it on the ground as well – we probably leaked way too many goals over the back,” he said.
“It would have been easy to see on the TV and it was something we tried to fix at quarter time, but we didn’t get it done. It probably started from losing the initial contest, which wasn’t great and then unfortunately they got it out the back.
“The weird thing about goals that go over the back is that you still think you are in the game because they weren’t real momentum goals. We felt we were in the game until the end, but unfortunately they kicked a few easy ones in the end.”
And that was the case – Melbourne trailed by 17 points at three quarter-time, before falling away by more than seven goals.
Still, in the context of the season, it was a bump in the road against a team that possessed more experience and was a kick away from the Grand Final two years ago.
Melbourne has a 5-5 win/loss ratio after 10 rounds – better than any start to its season in 10 years. And while it was a disappointing day against the Power, particularly with its defensive efforts, it was far from disastrous.
