AFL trade period 2022: Melbourne battens down the hatches as dynasty reaches crossroads

The players, obviously, coach Simon Goodwin, key coaching staff additions Adem Yze and Mark Williams, and the executive and board who had stood by Goodwin when the going got tough in 2019 and 2020.

List managers and recruiters play much more of a backroom role, especially when they aren’t former players themselves. In Tim Lamb, a long-time policeman, and former air-conditioning salesman Jason Taylor, the Dees had among the lower key list manager/national recruiting manager double-acts.

When you had been as poor as Melbourne had been over several seasons, a glut of early draft picks eventuates. But the Demons had botched enough first-rounders over the journey to know that there were never any guarantees. They also needed to complement their stars with a bunch of role-players and home in on the right trade and free agency targets to develop a winning mix.

At the end of 2019, a year in which the Dees plummeted from a preliminary final to second-bottom, Melbourne made sure not to waste a crisis, picking up versatile tall Luke Jackson at pick No.3 and small forward Kozzy Pickett 10 selections later.

Both picks raised eyebrows at the time: Jackson on the grounds that the Demons already had one of the best ruckmen in the league in Max Gawn, and Pickett on the basis that it was historically early to invest in a player standing at just 1.71 metres.

Within two years both moves were definitive masterstrokes. The pair were both premiership players, Jackson having won the Rising Star award before playing a central role in turning the grand final, Pickett booting 40 goals for the season as well as being a brilliant pressure player.

After such a long drought, there is an argument that whatever came from this Melbourne group beyond 2021 was a bonus, albeit the lure of winning an MCG premiership provided extra impetus, as acknowledged by an emotional Goodwin following the Dees’ semi-final exit this season.

And it is human nature to want more. What have you done for me lately? Especially with such a young core, the catch cry of sustained success looked not only achievable but likely.

At 10-0 it was all going to plan. Then the season unravelled. Injury, ill-discipline, off-field infighting. It was the recipe for a premiership defence gone awry; a back half of the season dotted with defeats of a similar nature where contested possession and territorial advantage could not be franked and countless leads evaporated into the MCG night.

So what not long ago shaped as a ‘Deenasty’ has reached a crossroads of sorts. With Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca and Angus Brayshaw tied away for the long-term, there is minimal risk of the Dees completely falling away. But when your team is in the premiership window, even a minor step backwards is critical, particularly as the likes of the Brisbane Lions, Richmond and Port Adelaide get ready to bring in needle-shifting talent.

While Jackson’s season was middling at best, what he has shown overall across his 52 AFL games is enough for the Demons to demand multiple first round selections, aware that Jackson’s departure has the capacity to hurt in the short, medium and long-term.

But yet again Lamb was proactive enough not to squander the chance to make the most of Jackson’s exit. And in Brodie Grundy the Dees have a player as close to Jackson as there is, albeit with considerable more kilometres on the odometer.

“There’s some similarities with Luke around his follow-up, his aggression, his contest work, yeah, definitely,” Lamb said on Monday.

He stopped short however of suggesting Melbourne would be a better team in 2023.

“It’s a big call to say you’ll be better when you lose a talent like Luke Jackson. But if we’re able to bring Brodie in, which we’re really hopeful that we are, that’ll keep us in good stead while we’re in the ‘win now’ phase.”

“Win now.”

It’s why even if Pickett wanted to be traded back to South Australia, the Dees would have been highly unlikely to accommodate the request given they know they are a serious premiership threat again next year. There are similarities with Fremantle, who is holding firm on Rory Lobb, noting quite reasonably that a strong key forward like him cannot be found easily, and that after a semi-final appearance in 2022 the Dockers should be bullish about their prospects next year too.

But Lamb is adamant that Pickett is happy in Melbourne and that a trade was never on the cards. He and Kane Cornes have engaged in a war of words about the matter over the last couple of days. It is now abundantly clear Pickett will be at Melbourne next year, having signed a contract extension until the end of 2023 two years ago.

The Cornes to-and-fro is entertaining, but the more intriguing element is whether Pickett will extend his deal or whether the Demons will end up in another Jackson situation in a year’s time.

Lamb spoke strongly on Trade Radio on Tuesday.

“Kozzy loves it here, loves this footy club, he’ll be a Melbourne player for a long time,” Lamb said.

But if Pickett enters next season without a new deal, the jungle drums will only grow louder. Certainly there is a feeling elsewhere around the league that it is a situation worth watching.

For Lamb and co. at the Dees, there will be no pushover. Having worked for the best part of a decade to turn a club resembling modern-day North Melbourne into the dominant side in the land for a period spanning the end of 2021 and the first half of 2022, it is understandable that they would get their backs up against the threat of opposition raids, especially for players whom they drafted cannily as calculated risks.

Lamb’s comments over the last couple of days have however provided some insight into a mindset of keeping one eye on the future. He seemed considerably more miffed at Toby Bedford trade request than Jayden Hunt’s decision to head to West Coast as a free agent. Similarly Lamb says the Dees are open to finding Adam Tomlinson a new home. Just quite where the talk around James Harmes got to is a touch challenging to decipher, but Lamb insisted on Tuesday that the versatile toughnut will remain at the club in 2023. And Lamb has flagged a debut next year for 2021 draftee Jacob van Rooyen, who had an impressive campaign as a tall forward in the VFL, winning a premiership with Casey.

An empire still beckons. But the landscape at Melbourne is a great reminder of how the AFL ecosystem never stands still.