Demons desperate for late-season revival
Melbourne assistant coach Sean Wellman says the Demons are desperate to post a victory against Fremantle on Sunday in a bid to kick-start a late-season AFL revival.
West Coast, Melbourne and Fremantle enter round 16 with just two wins apiece, meaning a win this weekend would go a long way to avoiding the dreaded wooden spoon.
"We are happy with the development of some of our young players and how our team's developed but we are not happy with having two wins on the board," Wellman said.
"We haven't won two games in a row so we want to win this week and try to win next week."
When asked his thoughts about the game being dubbed the Nick Naitanui Cup, Wellman replied: "Is Naitanui going to be the No. 1 pick? I didn't know that.
"Dean (coach Dean Bailey) has spoken about it (our ladder position) and our club's spoken about it - we're out there to win every single game.
"We can't afford to go into a game with any different mindset.
"We've got a young group and we are trying to teach them good habits...we can't worry about distractions like that because we want to be a very competitive side and win every game."
When the teams last met in round seven, the Demons overcame a 51-point deficit to post a famous six-point win.
Fremantle coach Mark Harvey admitted his charges needed to learn from that match and move on.
"It's an interesting game on the back of what happened during the (last) game," Harvey said.
"There's some areas we need to focus on and both sides are depleted from an injury aspect, hence we've found ourselves in this situation where we're not playing a finals scenario at the end of the year."
The Demons have made one change to the team that lost to the Western Bulldogs last week with Aaron Davey replacing the injured Brad Green (hamstring).
Fremantle have made three changes to the side that copped a 74-point smashing at the hands of Geelong, with Shaun McManus, Brock O'Brien and Josh Head replacing Dean Solomon (suspended), Clayton Hinkley (omitted) and Rhys Palmer (general soreness).
The Dockers 22 that will run out against Melbourne is a vastly different outfit that confronted Collingwood at the MCG in round one.
But Harvey said the combination of injuries, retirements and suspensions had allowed him to take a deeper look at his list.
"Look, I think we're up around 36 or 37 players we've played this year," he said.
"Players are getting opportunities, we're trawling the list and finding out where we're at."
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