Matthew Lloyd thinks that Melbourne must recruit a ruckman to support Max Gawn in the last few years of his career.
The Essendon great’s call came after Gawn went down with a chipped fibula that will rule him out of at least this week’s clash against Essendon and coach Simon Goodwin expects him to spend some further time on the sidelines.
With the only other two options on the list in ruck/forward Tom Fullarton and former basketballer Will Verrall, who have both been playing VFL, Lloyd called on the Demons to begin planning for life after Gawn.
He believes the Dees should recruit a player that can support Gawn in the best 23 and eventually take over once the 32-year-old eventually regresses.
“I think they have to start planning for life after Max Gawn,” Lloyd said on Footy Classified.
“But how do you attract the ruckman to come when Luke Jackson, Brodie Grundy and all of these guys have moved on?
“It worked okay with Jackson. But I just wonder … they need to get somebody else there to support him.
“I think he’s got one more year maybe in him of stardom, but I think he’s a banged up, 31-32 year old.”
Melbourne great Garry Lyon agrees with Lloyd’s take but firmyl feels that the Demons actually have been trying to prepare for a post-Gawn life.
He thinks that the Demons have just been unlucky to lose both Jackson and Grundy who opted to move on for various reasons.
“I’m a big Matthew Lloyd fan, but that’s just as captain obvious as you can get,” Lyon told SEN Breakfast.
“You’ve got a plan for life after Gawn, that’s right and they have been trying to. They tried the Grundy thing, but that didn’t work.
“So, the next question would be to Lloyd not, ‘Do you see him coming to an end?’, but, ‘How do you plan for him?’.
“First, they drafted the replacement for life after Max Gawn in Luke Jackson, but he proved to be so good that he got poached on big dollars.
“They went down the established older ruckman to be in concert with him, and that didn’t work because Grundy wanted to be a ruckman in his own right.
“So, the next question is, how do you plan for it? Do you go and take the best young kid you can? Do you go and draft someone who potentially is a year or two away?”
Lyon also believes that it’s been hard for the Dees to bring a quality ruckman in over the last few years given that like Grundy, they would have realised that they had no chance of usurping Gawn as the No. 1 option at the club.
“They’ve got Fullarton, I don’t know much about Tom Fullarton, and they’ve got a guy called Will Verrall, he was a basketballer,” Lyon said.
“I think they’ve planned but it hasn’t sort of worked out. It’s a hard one to plan for when you’ve got the best ruckman of the modern era in your team.
“By the way, I don’t think he’s finished. He’s the All-Australian ruck right now in my mind.
“They did with Braydon Preuss as well, don’t forget. They’ve tried everything and the problem is that the bloke who’s there just keeps getting better and is the best in the business.
“All the things you try, but at some stage, they (other ruckmen) keep looking at him going, ‘I’m not hanging around for this long because he’s just getting better’.
“I think they’re trying.”
Melbourne will pick their Gawn replacement on Thursday night ahead of Saturday night’s clash against Essendon at the MCG.