From the Pocket: Melbourne must leave buzz words and fan favourite behind to rise again

From the boardroom to the gameplan to the post-match grab, the default position at the Melbourne Football Club is defence. The coach mentions it every time he speaks. “Con-test and dee-fence”, he says. Whenever a story flares up, and the Demons have been fighting fires on multiple fronts for several years now, their instinct is always to deny, to thwart, to block.

Even in recent weeks, as stories swirled about Christian Petracca’s desire to play elsewhere, the club stonewalled. No way Christian – you’re contracted for five more years, you’re our most important player and you’ll be playing at Carlton or Collingwood over our dead body.

Melbourne have been on the back foot since their premiership in 2021. They’ve been fending off disgruntled former presidents, tabloid reporters, Mornington Peninsula rumour-mongers, doctors, door-stoppers, drug testers, breathalysers. All through it, the policy has been to insist that everything’s OK – we’re connected, we’re united, we’re fine. Have we mentioned our culture?

Ah yes, “culture”. CEO Gary Pert and coach Simon Goodwin mentioned the word 74 times in one half-hour radio interview. Pert said it was the best he had seen in his time in the game. “It’s a living, breathing organism, every single day,” he told a club members forum. He spoke of the four pillars at Melbourne: “Trust, Respect, Unity, Excellence”.

They’re strong words, and they look great on a whiteboard, but they’re really meaningless. They’re rolled out in the mission statements of private schools, of C-grade amateur clubs, of banks, of local councils. And most footy fans can see through the bullshit. “That’s great,” they were entitled to reply, “but how’s Clarry? Any chance we could find a reliable key forward who can kick straight?”

Three years ago, Petracca turned in one of the great individual performances in a grand final. Moving like a speed skater, he finished with 40 disposals, two goals and 24 contested possessions. In the history of football, only Gary Ablett Jnr has managed those figures. Ablett did it in front of two lifeguards and a dog on the Gold Coast. Petracca did it in one of the most important games in his club’s history.

Petracca has often presented as a young man content with his lot. He was more brand than man. He was flogging secondhand electrical goods, energy drinks, cologne, sunscreen, oysters – the lot. “My best football starts with a smile,” he said. Granted, he said it in an ad for teeth whiteners, but the paid adverts and the straight up interviews are often indistinguishable these days anyway.

Heading into this year’s King’s Birthday clash, he’d had a pretty charmed run. He’d played 145 games in a row. His most serious injury was when he’d been bitten by his dog Cooper. He was on track for another All-Australian blazer.

Before the game, Collingwood’s Darcy Moore addressed his teammates in the huddle. “They can’t go with us – let’s break their spirit,” the Magpies captain said. His right knee also broke four ribs, lacerated a kidney, punctured a lung and exposed all Melbourne’s fault-lines – failures in duty of care, in messaging, in leadership. It exposed all the cracks that had been papered over amid the paid promotions, the four pillars and the 40 possession games.

The current position from many supporters and former players in the media is that Petracca needs to harden up. But try the “suck it up” approach on any person under 30, let alone an elite sportsperson, and see how that plays out. Besides, does anyone seriously believe this relationship is salvageable? Are both parties going to spend the next five years insisting everything is OK? Will a few strategically dropped Instagram posts mend it all?

The thing about trades, contracts and the media landscape generally is that it’s incredibly difficult for clubs or individuals to be honest, to speak in proper sentences, to not communicate through proxies, hyperventilating journalists and cryptic social media posts. That’s where Petracca has lost his fans. Whoever leaked that changing clubs would help “build his brand” has done him a massive disservice.

But Melbourne have erred too. Their senior leaders have to stop crapping on about “culture” and “learnings” and “alignment”. They have to stop being so defensive and tin-eared. And they have to accept that this magnificent footballer will be playing elsewhere next year, and that it presents the perfect opportunity to change, to replenish and to challenge again. Otherwise they’ll spend the next five years tangled in LinkedIn mumbo-jumbo, lost in learnings and mired in mid-table irrelevance.

• This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions