THERE’S no denying Melbourne failed to meet expectations in 2020.
The Demons set out to play finals and fell one win short.
In a tense final round, the Dees watched on with their destiny in Fremantle’s hands – a near-identical situation to the 2017 season – and skipper Max Gawn said the club simply can’t let that happen again.
“I didn’t need to watch the Fremantle game to know I didn’t want to be in that position,” Gawn told Melbourne Media.
“Similar to previous years … the most disappointing part is when the fate was in your own hands.
“Once we lost to Fremantle, I knew we had screwed it up ourselves.
The Dees are now heading home from the Twin Waters high performance hub without tasting finals footy, and there’s only one way to look at this season.
“This year’s a fail,” Gawn said.
“You can get positives from within a fail, but this year goes down as a fail – we’ve come ninth.
“We’re not playing in the top eight where we want to be – we want to be higher than the eight.”
But despite not achieving their goals, Gawn says his side’s campaign wasn’t a complete waste, turning a difficult situation around when hope could easily have been lost.
“The positives are the improvements from last year, the hub experience – being 8-5 through the hub,” he said.
“Coming into the hub at 1-3 you could’ve written any odds for us to play finals and we almost got there.
“That experience is a positive, but the overall vibe of the year is definitely a negative.”
And there’s one lingering frustration among Demons fans, and the playing group: Cairns.
So, what went wrong in a week that saw Melbourne’s season disappear with losses to the Swans and Dockers?
“You can look at it two different ways,” Gawn said.
“They’re technically quite even with us and around the same mark in ladder position.
“We obviously think we’re a better side than where we are on the ladder, and Fremantle probably think they’re a better side than where they are on the ladder, but we played a side that was pretty even with us and we didn’t really turn up.
“And then there’s the other way to look at it, that we completely blew our season up in two games in six days.
“The amazing amounts of travel, and a short turn around, and the hot day – a windy day – that led into that Sydney game, but you’ve got to be able to switch on and we couldn’t.
“We’ll be dealt with situations like that again where we don’t get an amazing lead up and we’ve got to be better than that.
“Both of them are disappointing.
“I left Cairns thinking we had blown the season.”
The week in Queensland’s far-north was the beginning of the end for the Demons in 2020, and Gawn is still hurting.
“I can’t speak for everyone, but I myself am a supporter of the club as well,” he said.
“You live and breathe football, you live and breathe this club, you live and breathe the AFL hub at the moment.
“There’s this massive sense, more than any other year, of not getting the job done because of how much we sacrificed to be here.
“It really was disappointing.
While this year wasn’t to be for the Dees, who didn’t rise to the occasion when it mattered most, the nature of the circumstances they – and the other 17 sides in the league – faced, shouldn’t be underestimated.
On the 5th of July, just moments after its Round 5 loss to Richmond, Melbourne boarded a bus, departing the MCG for a five-week stint in Sydney.
Or so it thought.
Eleven weeks later, it’s fair to say the club endured situations it never signed up for.
The players, coaches, staff and family members road an enormous amount of challenges throughout that period, and it has taken its toll.
“I’ve sacrificed a fair bit, but so has my wife,” Gawn said.
“It’s been a difficult three months, but it’s also 24/7 footy up here.
“We’ve tried to distinguish when you’re wearing the uniform … and you’re being the Melbourne person, and you have to be able to get away from that when you’re not wearing it.
“You see coaches the day after the game when you don’t normally see them, and you wonder why Goody (Simon Goodwin) is a little bit grumpy.
“It’s very, very difficult to be able to manage performance and expectations when you’re seeing people every day for 100 days – how many days have we been here?”
It may have only been 80 days, but as Gawn said, it felt like every bit more.
There’s no denying it was tough, but the first-year captain holds no excuses, and has learned a lot along the way.
“It’s been challenging but I’ve enjoyed every bit of it as well,” he said.
“I’ve enjoyed the challenges that come with trying to lead a group through this scenario, I just wish that it went for a little bit longer.
“It’s been an invaluable experience.
“You’re never going to get the experience that we got this year of living with your teammates for the whole year.
“You can get really worked up about things … or you can try to bring some of the learnings you’ve learnt and utilise it back at home; which I will.
“I’ve learnt so much about myself, my teammates.
“I’ve learnt so much about footy, I’ve learnt so much about life as well.
“There’s so much to this, so it’s going to be a good unpacking and hopefully come January when we’re back, we’re a completely new club that’s going to play regular finals football and be ruthless in the way we play.”
