What Simon Goodwin’s payout means for the Dees in 2026 and its coaching search

Nathan Buckley is already a hot favourite on a weekend when premiership coach John Longmire withdrew from the race.

And yet before Buckley actually sits down for a formal interview he should be asking one key question.

Is the $1.2 million payout handed to Simon Goodwin going to handcuff me as senior coach in any way before I get started?

That panel is likely to be made up of CEO Paul Guerra, president elect Steven Smith, president Brad Green and football boss Alan Richardson.

The club will consider adding an external football person and a recruitment-type expert.

If they were smart they would look hard at someone like ex-Melbourne onballer Jordan Lewis, who has done the job before on Essendon’s six-person panel appointing Brad Scott.

His football experience is well advertised and he is a partner in executive search firm SHK, currently trying to find a new AFLPA boss.

Richardson is contracted for next year despite speculation he would lose his job alongside Goodwin.

For the record, he is an absolutely outstanding football person who has been integral in the work and care for Clayton Oliver and done much to help the healing of a fractured football club.

He would work perfectly with a Buckley type or a first-timer like Hayden Skipworth, but regardless he is contracted so the Demons would have to pay him out to replace him.

And Melbourne is already working through the ramifications of the 2023 contract extension to Goodwin, which means they are on the hook for his full $1 million payout.

That contract was signed in the days before the final round of 2023 as the Demons again backed Goodwin after another wave of headlines over his conduct amid a Melbourne boardroom dispute.

Less than a month later, the Demons had crashed out of finals with a second consecutive straight sets departure.

It was a weird time to extend the coach’s contract so close to a massive finals campaign and in the end it will cost them a bomb.

Coaches deserve all the salary they get when they are effectively being paid danger money, so the Demons might consider the $1 million payout a 2021 premiership bonus.

But the nature of the AFL’s football department soft cap means the Demons will either have to cut costs in their football department next year to absorb his wage or pay a hefty AFL tax bill.

If the Demons had waited a matter of weeks would they have been in a position to reduce that pay out even to 70 or 80 per cent of his 2026 wage?

If Goodwin had pushed back on a reduced payout they could have countered by saying they would let his contract run into its final year in 2024.

Even that saving would have helped save the club several hundred thousand dollars, which in today’s landscape is another assistant coach.

Melbourne might be able to split that payout over two years but clubs are taxed 25 per cent for any overspend up to $100,000, by 50 per cent for spending $100,000-$250,000 over the cap, 75 per cent for spending $250,000-500,000 over the cap and 100 per cent for spending $500,000-$1 million over the cap.

So they either waste money on soft cap penalties or pay less than 100 per cent of a cap which other clubs will invest in next year as it goes up $750,000.

So what Buckley would be asking is whether he would be compromised in any way in bringing in what you would assume would be the cream of the AFL crop.

Like Goodwin, Buckley won’t come cheap if he does arrive but he would also be asking what the club plans to do with its full-time base.

Melbourne is putting all its eggs into the Caulfield development, aware doing anything else will compromise its chances of that build going ahead.

But if it can get that project green-lit it would be 3-5 years before it was built.

So Melbourne would tell him that it is open to finding a temporary home or solutions that do not rely upon regular trips to Casey Fields.

The challenge for Melbourne is that facility has everything it needs in terms of gym, oval and meeting rooms, it is just an absolutely punishing trip to make weekly.

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And it is a facility the Demons are aware makes it very hard to recruit talent who have other Victorian options.

Hawthorn will in coming weeks unveil its state-of-the-art Dingley facility and the Demons will fall further behind as a destination club.

So the Demons search starts in earnest on Monday with Buckley adamant the challenge is “compelling” but infrastructure and financial challenges still clouding the club’s coaching search.