Why Melbourne shouldn't get a priority pick - The Age

Tom Scully left Melbourne, but the Demons got two first-round picks to make up for his defection to the Giants. Photo: Getty Images

Melbourne knows better than any other club that the best draft picks guarantee little - unless you call the right names and develop them well - and the Demons will find it difficult to convince the AFL Commission that one more will do much to lift them back up the ladder. From a public relations viewpoint it would have been nice to hear the club say it doesn't need any more help or handouts. In requesting another priority pick, it feels like Melbourne is instead reinforcing the sense of helplessness that has surrounded it for so long, and that it should be doing its best to disown.

Melbourne has been bad for a very long time. There's no question of that. Since 2007 the club has won just 38 games, more than only the expansion clubs. The Dees have not finished higher than 12th in that time and have finished in the bottom few more often than not. Not winning creates any number of flow-on problems off the field - the club needs people to want to watch it play. The Demons have very few players who know what it takes to get to the finals and win them, let alone help their younger teammates understand it, simply because it's been so long since the club made it to September. But they have had opportunity and time enough to fix themselves up. "Rewarding" them for the mistakes they have made would not to be fair to the other clubs, despite Paul Roos' willingness to trade and give them a chance to move up in the order.

It's worth noting that any "special assistance" the commission might choose to give the club doesn't need to be a first-round draft pick. It could be a later choice, a small bundle of later picks, a pick that must be traded to another club, priority access to an older, state league player or perhaps even some off-field concessions that would allow the Demons to beef up their (already much improved) development department. These options were thrown up last year when the same request was knocked back. They would be a stretch this time around, too.

Melbourne has been given plenty of help off the field, including an extra $1.45 million in assistance at the end of last year, enough to bolster its coaching staff beyond Roos. Its supporters should be encouraged by what its recruiting team did last November, and that Roos has decided to extend his stay. The Dees might have only won four times this year, but that's twice as many as last season. It doesn't seem like that many weeks ago that we, and they, were talking about the positive steps they had started to take. Sunday was a disastrous flashback but this team is better than it was.