Twelve years on, Melbourne prepares for September
It was all so promising for Melbourne. The year was 2006, and under the coaching of Neale Daniher,
the Demons went to the finals for a third consecutive year and the sixth time in nine years under his
guidance.
Ousted in the first week of finals in 2004 and 2005, this time, they would win a final against St Kilda
at the MCG, sending them to Perth for an encounter with Fremantle. Then just as soon as the
optimism rose, they were out of the race. Little did they know as they walked off Subiaco that day
that it would the club’s last appearance in a final for 12 years.
Russell Robertson remembers the feeling well, for Melbourne’s players felt they had a chance in
2006. “We didn’t get across the line, it was a massive crowd over there and Freo were a team that
would rise to the occasion at home,’’ he said. “We were bitterly disappointed after that.’’
The truth is that Melbourne’s list, one that had gone all the way to a grand final in 2000, was tiring.
Less than a year on, Daniher had gone, publicly challenged by the club chairman Paul Gardner and
ultimately walking 13 rounds into the 2007 season, a year that began with nine straight defeats.
Melbourne missed the finals in 2007 and kept missing them, appointing Dean Bailey as head coach
and entering a rebuild that failed dismally. It has taken until now to find their way back into
September action.
Robertson remembers that the club was working against big odds in 2006. It had not moved into the
modern era; still ensconced at the old grandstand at the Junction Oval where the administration and
coaching staff had to deal with extraordinary difficulties.
“Now that I think back it was impressive to play so many finals considering our facility, and by facility I don’t just mean the Junction Oval, but the amount of coaches, staffing and the science really,” he said.
“We’d heard that teams like the West Coast Eagles and the Adelaide Crows were using it and that was probably the start of it, really, and it’s huge now. Everyone’s got everything now but back then we were a smell-of-an-oily rag sort of thing. Neale had to work extremely hard to keep up with these other clubs who were ahead of the curve.
“At the Junction, the possums were running inside. Famously, when ‘Connolls’ [Chris Connolly] came to work at Melbourne he went upstairs, and it was 50 centimetres thick in possum crap. One of our workers had a maggot fall down on her computer because there was a dead possum in the roof. It
was deplorable and the point of that is, Neale did a wonderful job with Mark Riley and Chris Fagan for a time, to get up where we did.’’
Captain David Neitz kicked 68 goals in 2006 in a nice spread of goalkickers that included Robertson’s
personal contribution of 44, Aaron Davey’s 37 and Adem Yze’s 30. Daniher was at the height of his
powers as coach, long before he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, and Robertson loved his style.
“As an older person now I reflect on how he managed me and how he managed others, and you go
‘wow, how blessed was I to have that guy teach me how to be a man, teach me how to be a
footballer’. I was wet behind the ears, from Tassie, came over and tried to make it over here. I needed someone like that to see what I had in me, to get that out of me, keep me level. He did all of that and he did it for all of us.
“He’d say ‘there’s the Russell who worked hard at training, and then there’s Robbo who kicks a goal
and takes a mark, flashy to the crowd. You always work your best when you’re something in
between that’. That’s brilliant. He’d have a laugh at me about some of the stuff I did, not take it too
seriously. He came from the school that ‘you need a few cowboys in your footy club’. I see that in
[current coach] Simon Goodwin. He’s one of the boys too. He understands they’ve got their own
character and you work in with that.”
Robertson never left Melbourne. He has remained as an ambassador, and he spends lots of time at
the club. Watching the Demons defeat West Coast in Perth last weekend with his partner in the city,
he felt the same sense of relief and excitement that overcame the Melbourne supporters starved of
glory for so long. The win ensured that Melbourne would play finals; the position will be determined
by Sunday’s game against Greater Western Sydney at the MCG.
Now the challenge is to embrace the hype, or handle it, starting with the Giants match. “There’s a bit of column A and column B in that regard,” said Robertson. “For our fans, it’s unbridled jubilation. I hope a lot of them are at the GWS game on Sunday but we’re definitely playing finals. It’s really, dynamic football the boys are playing. For the boys, they really need to keep the eye on the prize, play the football that they can.
“The boys are trying to come to terms with the fact that they are really good and that we can beat
anyone on the day. That’s something you can’t really tell someone. You’ve got to do it. And they
have done it.”