Demons linked with Bevo amid Goodwin pressure

IN an AFL leadership bombshell, Luke Beveridge has been linked with replacing under fire Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin after the club’s horror 0-5 start to the season.

The Demons were hapless in their 39-point loss to Essendon in Adelaide on Saturday night are Gather Round, a performance which compounded an utterly miserable 2025 to date.

The defeat to the Bombers was the latest in a growing list of underwhelming performances, prompting Kane Cornes to state that the Dees are “totally unwatchable” and gave Goodwin four weeks to save his job.

Amid speculation over how long the coach will remain in place, Caroline Wilson is adamant the Demons are seriously looking at Beveridge as a replacement.

“I have no doubt that Luke Beveridge is now very much on Melbourne’s radar,” Wilson said on Channel 7’s Agenda Setters.

“It’s too early to be calling Simon Goodwin finished at the Melbourne Football Club, but club bosses are now anticipating that as a possibility, and they are declaring that Luke Beveridge would very much be an option for them.”

So far this year Goodwin’s side has produced scores of 74, 66, 62, 46 and 57 at 61 points per game – the second fewest in the league only to West Coast – while conceding 100.6 points per game.

But with so much pressure on the coach, one burning question on the expert’s lips is, in the absence of a club CEO, could Goodwin actually be sacked? Who is making decisions at the Demons?

Former club captain Garry Lyon commented on the situation.

“Whose radar is he (Bevo) on?” Garry Lyon said on SEN Breakfast.

“That is, there’s no CEO at the moment, there’s an interim president.”

While Lyon went on to defend the club, highlighting that if top four is considered competitive then perhaps the major fall out has only been a topic of conversation since Petracca was injured against Collingwood mid-way through last season, Tim Watson did not hold back.

“This has been an ongoing problem for maybe three years, maybe even longer,” Watson said.

“The job of a coach is to diagnose a problem and then to be able to fix it. On the evidence that we’ve seen the Melbourne Football Club of the last few years with recruiting philosophy, whatever it might be, Melbourne have not been able to fix that.

“So Simon Goodwin has failed in his ability to be able to fix what every Melbourne fan out there can see as a major problem and has been a major problem for a period of time.”

There will be no let-up for Melbourne who come up against Fremantle at the MCG this Saturday.

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