Embarrassing, but success covers the cracks for Simon Goodwin

That the Melbourne Football Club’s hierarchy conversed with the AFL over concern about Simon Goodwin’s alleged behaviours, including a bullying claim by a since-departed doctor, represents an embarrassment for the coach and the Demons, who had spent four months basking in the glow of a storied premiership.

Goodwin is fortunate that the dirty linen and internal division has been aired after the season rather than February or March 2021. Would he be a premiership coach if this had come to light last pre-season? The same blessed timing applies to the club administration and board.

Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin.Credit:Getty Images

Coaching legend Allan Jeans liked to say that success was like wallpaper at footy clubs: there were always cracks, but success papered over them.

In Goodwin’s case, the major crack of division was removed in April of last year, when the board ousted then president Glen Bartlett, who had questioned Goodwin publicly in 2020 and who clearly nursed doubts about whether the coach was the man to deliver the grail.

Today, Bartlett is very much on the outer at the Demons, and Goodwin – whom the previous president had questioned in public – is safe as houses. External embarrassment has not dented the internal view of the coach, who has gone from the edge of the cliff to a place in the red-and-blue pantheon: he is the only living coach of the code’s oldest club.

Goodwin’s management has been in talks over a new contract and the expectation is that he will be given three years minimum. A three or four-year deal would hardly surprise considering the flag, the near-unconditional backing of the playing group and the reality that the Demons are as well-placed for multiple premierships as Richmond were in October 2017.

It is remarkable that the Demons managed to win a flag in barnstorming style only months after such misgivings or doubts about their coach, who then was perceived – wrongly, it turned out – to be closer to walking the plank than Nathan Buckley or David Teague.

The Demons were seen – rightly, it turned out – to be a team that had grossly underachieved in 2019 and 2020, and this, more than any of Goodwin’s conduct, was the reason he was in the sights of Bartlett with his position very much on the line.

Numerous football industry insiders agreed that the coach had suffered from his past reputation as a “lad” whose hard training was matched by a sizeable hedonist streak.

While Bartlett’s removal as president wasn’t entirely about his vexed relationship with Goodwin, this was certainly a major factor. On Tuesday, this column was told that Bartlett had acted independently of the club board in meeting AFL bosses Gillon McLachlan and Richard Goyder to discuss the sensitive topic of Goodwin’s alleged behaviour. It is fair to surmise that other members of the Melbourne board were not impressed that their president had acted without their full approval (albeit with one other director at the meeting).

That said, it was reasonable in 2020 for Bartlett to question Goodwin, who took on the internal feedback and accepted change – notably the arrival of Mark Williams and Adem Yze and the shift, engineered by chief executive Gary Pert, of Alan Richardson from senior assistant coach to football operations chief.

If there was a cloud over Goodwin and scuttlebutt about his conduct, numerous football industry insiders agreed that the coach had suffered from his past reputation as a “lad” whose hard training was matched by a sizeable hedonist streak. The former skipper of the Crows had been penalised for a gambling breach in his playing days, while avoiding sanction for having used peptides during the Essendon saga – the latter situation compelling the Demons to check in with the AFL before hiring him as coach-designate under Paul Roos.

Melbourne reached a confidential six-figure settlement with the ex-club doctor Zeeshan Arain over the bullying claim. The Demons were silent about this matter on Tuesday, focusing their attention on protecting their coach and presenting a united front.

What this episode underscored was the extent of change at Melbourne over 12 months – not least the change in how Goodwin went about coaching the team and his willingness to be challenged. If he’s the same man, his circumstances and Melbourne’s are a world away.

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