I’ve been watching The Idol recently.
Not good.
The big issue that The Idol has is that it doesn’t know what it is. Occasionally it’s very funny on purpose (“he’s a person of colour”), sometimes it’s funny by accident (the girl that has a conniption at the sight of a pool, like she’s never seen an enclosed body of water adjacent to a home before).
Sometimes it’s trying to be a feminist drama (albeit with some Tarantino-esque foot shots) and then other times it’s trying to be the least hot anti-feminist erotic thriller known to man (The Weeknd’s aggressive and strange dirty talk, the way the director clearly finds Lily-Rose Depp attractive).
The show just seems to be a bit confused, like the MRO when some player inevitably takes a crowbar to someone’s knee. It seems bad, but it’s only a knee injury. Concussion? No? Give him a fine.
I sometimes have the same thought while watching the Demons, and I still have that thought as they exit their bye week. They are obviously better than The Idol, which might be aggressively bad, but what are they?
Are they the team that stopped Collingwood’s transition game? Or are they the team that eked their way to wins against Carlton, Richmond and Gold Coast (admittedly in Darwin, where the Suns are a juggernaut) and lost to Freo? That’s a team that is at times stagnant and confused.
It’s hard to tell halfway through the year, but part of the confusion might come from a disconnect between how Melbourne wants to play, and how Melbourne is built.
They’re a bit like if Lily-Rose Depp got a BBL. All their resources are at the back.
The names in their forward six for the Collingwood game were as follows: Tom Sparrow, Joel Smith, Alex Neal-Bullen, Bayley Fritsch, Jacob Van Rooyen and Kade Chandler.
(Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
Compare that to the backs: Trent Rivers, Steven May, Jake Lever, Michael Hibberd, Adam Tomlinson and Christian Salem.
Are they the only team in footy that has more famous defenders than they do forwards?
And beyond that, no club in football has invested more resources into their middle six players. They obviously have Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney who are excellent and all players that it makes sense to invest heavy resources in. But they also devote real resources to two excellent ruckmen in Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy.
In the modern game, it’s just Fremantle and Melbourne who do this, and only one of them is having any success with it.
In short, it’s a weird construction. Based on team balance alone this should be a side that is utterly dominant around the ball and in the clearance game and miserly down back, but what do the numbers say?
The numbers say that, even with their motley crew of a forward line, they are fourth in scoring and their defence is holding up well enough to be second in point differential. They’re also extremely effective at the intercept and pressure game, sitting first in intercepts per game and fourth in tackles inside 50. They’re also fifth in least opponent metres gained, and third in metres gained themselves.
Stopping Collingwood’s run wasn’t an accident.
As far as the midfield goes, some of their numbers are strong. They’re second in contested ball, fourth in hit outs and their opponents get the fourth least stoppage clearances per game.
But they are also 11th in centre clearances and 15th in stoppage clearances with both differentials also sitting below league average.
They’re basically to the same core principles that served Richmond so well in 2019. They have totally devalued clearances, though not to the extent the Tigers did, and focused more heavily on gaining metres and generating scores from the intercept and turnover game. The difference is that Melbourne have invested their resources totally differently to Richmond in 2019.
The Tigers in 2019 had a comparably stacked defence to Melbourne in 2023, but forward of centre they were built around Tom Lynch and Jack Riewoldt. Riewoldt only played 13 games that season, but Lynch kicked 63 goals and Riewoldt was healthy for the finals.
On the other hand, Melbourne’s midfield is significantly better than Richmond’s of 2019, when you take into account the ruckmen. Each side has a wolverine-type game wrecker in Dustin Martin and Petracca, but Melbourne’s bats deeper and has a comparably elite player in Oliver (notwithstanding the cognitive dissonance of having an elite athlete redhead – is it just Steve Hooker and Clarry?).
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The real difference comes in the ruck. Where Melbourne have Gawn and Grundy, the rucks on Richmond’s list were Toby Nankervis, Callum Coleman-Jones (who is more of a forward anyway) and a few other pinch hitters.
Even if they are less chaotic than that Richmond side, the tenets of winning football that were true in 2019 are also true in 2023 for the Demons.
So, what does it all mean? It means that Richmond’s personnel and list profile was probably better suited to the type of game that Melbourne is playing this year given the resources allocated to two dominant key forwards as opposed to two rucks in a team that isn’t building its game around clearance domination.
Melbourne is built one way but want to play another.
Like The Idol, they don’t know who they are. Unlike The Idol, it doesn’t seem to matter. At worst, Melbourne has the third-best list in the AFL, they’re third on the ladder and they’re second on percentage. The HBO show does not bat that deep, a fact to which Hank Azaria’s accent can attest.
Despite the confusion, they are a damn good side and a good chance for another premiership.
The Idol is only going to win the horny teenagers award for where to go when your parents discover how to lock certain websites.