Melbourne coach Mark Neeld at the MCG against GWS Giants. Picture: Wayne Ludbey Source: Herald Sun
WHAT must it feel like to have 30 minutes of football to save your coaching career?
Imagine the pressure on the players when they can feel their club imploding.
For two agonising hours the pressure built on Mark Neeld and his Melbourne players, all well aware of the possible consequences of a loss yesterday to a Greater Western Sydney side that kept coming.
When Neville Jetta's late hit on young Giant Lachie Whitfield resulted in the downfield free kick that saw the Demons trail by 19 points at three-quarter time, Neeld's coaching career was on life support.
How could he survive a trio of losses by a combined 315 points, and now a capitulation to Greater Western Sydney?
Yet less than an hour later, there was Neeld calmly sitting in the bowels of the MCG explaining how he inspired the Demons to a 41-point win.
Finally...how sweet it is. Picture: Wayne Ludbey Source: Herald Sun
The message from Neeld was about how much spirit his team had shown in recent weeks, and how it needed to be channelled when all seemed lost.
Then came the avalanche of goals against a tired Giants unit, a 12-goal quarter that broke records at Melbourne and showed the club might have a pulse after all.
Only hindsight will tell us whether this was a stay of execution or a second chance that Neeld will grasp with both hands.
After the club song was roared by the players, Neeld summoned every player, coach and board member for an impromptu rendition behind closed doors.
As Nathan Jones said of Neeld's message, a club on the verge of breaking had instead emerged stronger.
Jack Watts walks off the MCG after big win. Picture: Wayne Ludbey Source: Herald Sun
"Neeldy commended the entire footy club for sticking together. It's been a really tough four weeks and it's a bit of a fine line that it could have gone either way - the club splinters or it sticks together," Jones said.
"And it's been a credit to us that we have bonded over that period. We have been smacked from pillar to post but we believed in each other and today was reward for that."
Even for Melbourne it had been a week of extraordinary controversy - a late entry into the AFL supplements scandal, speculation about Neeld's tenure, a European scuffle for recruiter Jason Taylor, and even rumours of disunity among the club's assistant coaches.
President Don McLardy would have faced decisions of enormous consequence this week if there had been a different result at the MCG.
Instead he emerged from the inner chambers backslapping his fellow board members as he wondered at the sudden possibilities.
"We didn't just fall in. We exploded. We showed something today," McLardy said.
"It showed there is some talent in our team and I think people haven't seen that. The players are good and Mark spoke really well to them after the game.
"It was all the board members, all the assistant coaches (singing the song together). There is talk about the assistant coaches fighting. It is just pathetic.
"But when you have been playing like we have, you open yourself up to all that stuff. They didn't look like they were fighting to me when they were singing the song."
For Jack Trengove, linked to the supplements controversy and pilloried like few other young captains, the victory erased some of the pain of the past 18 months.
"It is what footy is really about. We have been under the pump from left, right and centre, and it's just reward to show that in the last quarter," Trengove said.
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