Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin has conceded his club is always looking at “contingencies” but wouldn’t confirm or deny interest in Collingwood ruckman Brodie Grundy as a potential replacement for young gun Luke Jackson.
Goodwin conceded Jackson, who has been heavily linked to a big-money move to Fremantle, had yet to inform the club whether he was staying or going in 2023.
But ahead of a must-win clash with Carlton on Friday night, with the Demons needing a win to maintain their chances of a top-four finish, Goodwin wouldn’t comment on a link to Grundy, who has five more years remaining on his contract at Collingwood.
“It’s a good story and I understand the questioning but I’ve been pretty clear on this over a number of years. I’m not going to speculate and talk about players from opposition clubs,” the premiership coach said on Wednesday.
“Clearly, people in our industry are going around looking at how they can potentially improve their list… that’s not my focus. It’s not for me to comment on.”
Goodwin said Melbourne would give Jackson, who has formed a key one-two punch with Demons captain Max Gawn, as much time as he needed to make a decision.
But he also said the club was always making contingency plans as part of list management, which would include covering Jackson’s potential departure.
“If you look at list management all the time you have contingency plans for a whole range of different things that sit within your environment,” he said.
“We’ve talked about Luke a lot. We are going to give him the most amount of time to make his decision about him. We don’t know what the decision is at the moment.
“We’ll continue to build contingencies, to work with Luke and give him the best environment possible to want to stay here and Luke will make that decision when the time is right.
“But as a club and as an organisation, you look at all positions … about how you are best going to move forward in the future.”
Goodwin said premiership defender Jake Bowey was “AFL ready” and could soon return to the Melbourne line-up having been sent back to the VFL after the round 17 loss to Geelong to find his best form.
But more changes to the team that lost by just seven points to Collingwood last week were unlikely for the clash with Carlton, Goodwin adamant his premiership-winning outfit was “tracking in the right direction”.
“We’re really comfortable with where our team is sitting. We clearly have a lot of pressure from guys underneath,” he said,
“But in terms of the type of player or personnel in the team, we are really comfortable. The last couple of weeks we have played some of our best footy for the year.
“We played a really dominant game against Fremantle and last week… we had momentum for big parts.
“There’s a lot to like in the way we are going, we just have to execute a little bit better and the results will be different.”
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