GOALKICKING hero Christian Salem says his match-sealer at the 29-minute mark of the final term was a surreal moment, when he reflected on his achievement after his side’s stunning come-from-behind one-point win over Essendon at the MCG on Sunday night.

Salem, who started at Melbourne’s substitute, showed great composure in just his seventh AFL match, when he went back and slotted through his first for the match – and his sixth AFL goal. He told Dee TV he was still pinching himself about his feat.   

“I’m still thinking about it now,” he said soon after the match.

“I saw Crossy (Daniel Cross) dink up the ball, so [I] took the mark and thought ‘I will take my time’.

“Then I looked up at the scoreboard and saw it was about 28 minutes gone, so I thought I’d go back, take my time and go through my routine and try and put it through.”   

Salem said his immediate thought after kicking the goal was to help out defensively.

“I was thinking, just get back. Get numbers back, because we weren’t sitting back,” he said.

“We had seen what happened when they (Essendon) kicked two in a row, so as soon as we got that, we just wanted to lock down completely and hold on until the siren.”

Reflecting on the win, after Melbourne trailed by 33 points early in the third term, Salem said “it was a game of two halves”.  

“In the first half, we probably played the worst football we’ve played all year and you could tell by the way we were second to the ball,” he said.

“We were lucky Essendon kept us in the game, because they kicked 17 points, but after half-time we came out much more charged.

“We were playing for each other and playing our role so I thought as a sub, when I came on, I just needed to play my role.”

Salem said he had kicked a goal after the siren as a junior once, “but it won’t compare to this”.

“I’m still sort of speechless, but the main thing is that we got the win and that’s all that matters,” he said.

Meanwhile, the soccer-mad Salem said he watched four World Cup matches before starring at his own game later in the day.

“I watched four games this morning (Sunday),” he said.

“I recorded them all and woke-up and watched them game by game, so I think I might do that every week now.”