At times over summer, it seemed unlikely that Clayton Oliver would ever play football for Melbourne again. “I think everyone had doubts,” Simon Goodwin said on Sunday. “I think even Clayton had doubts.”
His club’s unwillingness, or inability, to be upfront about what was happening, and to speak in normal sentences, only exacerbated the situation. Every time they used the word “culture” – and sometimes they used it four times in the one sentence – the scepticism grew and the situation worsened.
It grated on his teammates. They kept being asked about him. They kept sticking up for him. They used all the right lingo – “we hope he’s in a good space”, “we just want the best version of Clayton” – but they said it through increasingly gritted teeth.
That narrative changed in recent weeks, and it was mainly player driven. Last week, Christian Petracca spoke well about how Oliver had won back his teammates’ trust. It showed in the Demons’ round one clash with the Western Bulldogs.
There were some outstanding individual performances in round one: Isaac Heeney on Friday night, Jesse Hogan in Sydney’s west and Patrick Dangerfield in Geelong. But Oliver arguably surpassed them all.
Oliver hunted, tackled, cleared, created, and averted trouble. He didn’t stop moving all afternoon. He finished with 35 touches, despite spending at least a quarter of the game on the pine.
There are troubled souls and difficult-to-manage men at every club. But few have won four club champion awards by the age of 25. Few are as important to the overall fortunes of their club as Oliver.
There are very good judges – those who watch Melbourne every week, those who’ve watched them when they were untouchable, and when they were unspeakably bad – who reckon Oliver is the best Melbourne player they’ve seen.
There’s nothing elegant or complex about how Oliver plays. He just keeps getting the ball. He has a phenomenal work rate. He’s one of those footballers who seems to run on batteries.
The Demons struggled with the soapy ball and Sydney’s pressure in “opening round”. But they had conditions to suit this time. It was weather for building sandcastles but the MCG, on the back of three games in a row and two Taylor Swift concerts, was billiard table perfect.
The Dees entered to the wah-wah pedals and tom-tom drums of Metallica’s Enter Sandman. They play the metal lullaby at Virginia Tech college football games, which, it must be said, draws a different demographic to the MCC Members’ Reserve.
Melbourne were a bit sleepy early but with Oliver, Petracca, Steven May and captain Max Gawn completely dominant, they gradually took control. They moved the ball in straight lines last week and gave their forwards no chance. They were smarter, cleaner and far less rigid against the Bulldogs.
The heat will come for the Dogs. It’s the third year in a row they’ve dropped their opening game to Melbourne, and the previous two years were a portent of things to come. It can be tempting to read too much into round one, particularly as the AFL edges closer to playing games in summer, and it would be folly to write them off in the third week of March.
Their two debutants were impressive. Harvey Gallagher threaded a clever goal, his first at AFL level, while Ryley Sanders acquitted himself well. But they continue to frustrate and coach Luke Beveridge continues to confound.
The Bulldogs squandered too many easy opportunities in the second half. They’ve always been a team that relies on high energy, on total buy-in, and when that wanes even a fraction, they look ordinary. Melbourne exposed them and repeatedly left them flat-footed on turnover.
On a completely different note, what on earth is going on with the AFL’s goal umpiring fraternity? All around Australia, they seem completely spooked after the Adelaide Oval error last year. Over four days of football, they were second guessing, reviewing decisions and wasting time for the most bleedingly obvious of calls.
But this was all about Melbourne and Oliver. Since their premiership, the challenges have come from all sorts of places – from disgruntled former club presidents, tabloid hit pieces, Mornington Peninsula rumours, door stoppers, drug testers, breathalysers. The club hasn’t always convinced with its messaging: Everyone’s out to get us. Everything’s OK. We’re united. We’re connected. Don’t make us say “culture” again.
You suspect all they really wanted was for the football to start, to get back to the MCG and to have Oliver healthy again. That’s why the Melbourne faithful gave him a standing ovation. For the Dogs, it was death by 35 of Oliver’s cuts. One was reminded of Arthur Ashe describing a young John McEnroe. “It’s a slice here, a nick there, a cut over here. Pretty soon you’ve got blood all over you.” That was the Dogs’ lot. Imagine how much damage Oliver will inflict when he’s fully fit.
