Watts wrong with Melbourne?

Dejected Demons leave the MCG after being flogged by Port Adelaide. Picture: Wayne Ludbey Source: Herald Sun

DO. OR do not. There is no try.

Coming off a merciless hiding founded on indifference and incompetence has become standard fare for the modern-day Demons.

What has become clear in the aftermath is that Melbourne is in breach of all good faith. And its problems seem utterly entrenched.

That's particularly fraught ground for an increasingly marginal club to occupy.

In the wake of Neale Daniher's departure, Gerard Healy memorably described his old club as beige. Half a dozen years on, it is more pallid than drab.

What are the standards at Melbourne? Who sets them? Who enforces them? Who adheres to them?

Chief executive Cameron Schwab seems too browbeaten or embarrassed by baggage to lead publicly.

When the previous coach was sacked, he too was in the gallows and thus not heard. When the time came to redefine the club, he deferred to a freelancer in Garry Lyon to usher in the revolution.

Schwab's public commentary in the build-up to the season opener was: Isn't it just one of 22? That's realistically it. That's what it means for us. There will be another game the next week where we can bounce back if we lose the first one.

It served as a deadly portend of what was to come.

Don McLardy appears to be loyally executing the presidency of a dear friend. He never meant to lead Melbourne but rather signed up to help it.

The ingrained cultural failings within the club might not even have been identified, let alone rooted out.

Mark Neeld's team played with a paralysis; unorthodox structure undermined by a prevailing sense of confusion. That might improve with effort and practice.

It has been said his recruitment strategy owes to Moneyball. That is to misunderstand an oft-quoted text.

If there is an AFL equivalent to the baseball theorem, it's Sydney; poaching players with a specific skill set to fill an identified shortcoming.

Melbourne stockpiled players no longer wanted or needed by their clubs. But to understand just how bereft Melbourne is, you needed to read Jack Watts' explanation this week of the leadership gulf within the team, the absence of resilient characters of the calibre of Joel Selwood or Sam Mitchell.

"We don't have anyone like that today and that's the kind of thing that we need to work on," Watts told the Herald Sun. "That sort of culture and that grit to be able to turn those things around when momentum goes against us, because at the moment we just crumble."

Every word of this is true. It is a desperate void. But the missing person he speaks of is Jack Watts.

At 22 and in his fifth season Watts is older than one of his captains and has played more games than the other.

His underlings from the national draft of 2008 are carving out careers of substance and influence.

Nic Naitanui is the All-Australian ruckman. Phil Davis a club captain. Dan Hannebery has graduated from rising star to leading possession-getter for his team in a Grand Final.

Dayne Beams is a Copeland Trophy winner. Mitch Robinson has played for Australia. Daniel Rich won the Michael Tuck Medal. Michael Hurley is a place-getter in a best-and-fairest.

Jack Ziebell is vice-captain at North.

Watts was adjudged to possess more talent than each but has achieved nothing comparable beyond taking the field. The fault must be shared between Melbourne and himself.

Josh Fraser has been that No.1 draft pick. He walked into the wooden spoon team and played all bar four games in his first four years as the Magpies went from seven wins to 11 and onto back-to-back Grand Finals.

"The symbolic thing for me is that they are still trying to free up Jack Watts," Fraser said this week. "I think it's time now that they either make him accountable for someone back or they make him a target forward. They're letting Jack Watts off the hook.

"I think that's symbolic for the footy club -- they're looking for the easy way out."