Melbourne star Christian Petracca has admitted it “does feel a bit weird” for the club to be seen in such a negative light after its disastrous 92-point loss to Fremantle.
The Demons have come under fire in the aftermath of the lopsided result — the club’s biggest loss under Simon Goodwin — where they were smacked in basically all facets of the game and tumbled out of the top eight.
Speaking on Fox Footy’s AFL 360, Petracca said he believes “everything happens for a reason” and suggested it might be the “reality check” the club needs ahead of a blockbuster King’s Birthday showdown with Collingwood.
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Part of the criticism towards the Demons included club great Garry Lyon suggesting it didn’t mean enough to his former team.
“I just don’t think they care. They didn’t care enough on the weekend and that’s a damning assessment. They didn’t care for each other,” Lyon said Fox Footy’s On the Couch on Monday night.
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Petracca “disagreed” with Lyon’s observations, but conceded he “felt embarrassed” at times during the contest.
“The contest and aerial stuff is something we pride ourselves on and being out there I felt embarrassed, to be honest, the way we were playing,” he said on AFL 360.
“But in terms of saying ‘it doesn’t mean enough to us’, that’s not the case at all. We’ve got a connected group that’s willing to learn and develop and get better.
“A lot of this stuff is simple fundamentals that are putting ourselves under pressure and opening up the game and putting more stress on us on defence. These are things that are quite easy to control with our ball movement.
“They’re just missing simple handballs, I missed a few kicks bombing it in there, missed a few handballs, I wasn’t tackling hard enough. So there’s things in my game I can control.”
Asked how he felt during the game, he said: “A little bit of helplessness… you feel like everything’s going wrong.”
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There’s also been scrutiny towards Melbourne’s fitness levels and whether they put in the collective work for the grind of the season.
But Petracca downplayed such concerns when asked directly if the Demons were “rockhard fit”, responding: “You probably have two or three weeks off and I’ve been training since November, probably earlier, to now.
“Guys might be feeling sore going into games, but so is everyone else.”
The Demons superstar also conceded the club’s finals losses in recent seasons exposed it “relying too much on contest” and bombing the ball inside 50, but noted there needed to be a better balance with the more attacking game plan in 2024.
“The coaches are trying to adjust the game plan and trying to evolve in different ways and get better in every facet of every game,” he said.
“That is on contest and defence as well. Offence, there’s been a lot of talk over the last couple of years on our ball movement and how slow and boring they are. Maybe we have gone into that a little bit and we’re trying to shift it a bit more and have more fun with the footy.”