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"Made the phone call": The coaching candidate Roos believes Melbourne have contacted
SEN • August 5th, 2025 7:09 pm
Former Demons coach Paul Roos has spoken on Melbourne’s sacking of Simon Goodwin early on Tuesday morning.
The Demons and the 2021 premiership coach parted ways effective immediately after 11 seasons together - nine as senior coach, with the long-serving coach refusing to coach out Melbourne’s remaining three fixtures in 2025.
Speaking with media in a public press conference, stand-in president Brad Green confirmed that the decision to sack Simon Goodwin was a unanimous decision by the Melbourne board.
Although the decision comes as a shock to many – both internally and externally – Roos believes that when you strip back the emotion from the decision, the writing may have been on the wall.
“I think today it’s a shock, and then you unpack the noise, try to strip away the noise and try to remember some of the conversations you’ve heard or some of the telling conversations that have happened,” Roos told ABC Sport.
“Then you break it down and make some sort of sense out of it. When you do, four weeks to go, the timing… there’s been unrest, let’s been perfectly frank. The CEO (Gary Pert) left, Kate Roffey (former president) left, there’s been a legal (battle) with Glen Bartlett, Christian Petracca wanted to leave, Clayton Oliver wanted to leave – it’s not like we’re talking about a club that hasn’t had its fair share.
“My point is, when you take away the noise and the emotion, which is what the board would have done, then you try and make analytical decisions. There have probably been enough signs to suggest that this was not completely out of the realm of possibility.”
Referencing the board’s decision to move on from Goodwin, Roos believes that the club is looking to get ahead of the pack in regard to the glut of highly touted available senior coaches.
“I think the main reason would be, John Longmire, Adam Simpson (are available)… that’s the only thing I can really think of,” Roos continued.
“They’ve made the decision, they are going to do it, what do you do? You either let him go for the next three weeks, or you go now.
“Clearly the pros of getting rid of him now is your ability to go to the market really quickly without any other club impeding your quest for a new coach. If I had to guess why they would have gone early, I think that’s the reason.”
While Brad Green refused to note any potential replacements in Tuesday’s press conference, Roos is adamant that the club would not have come to this decision without doing their due diligence, expecting that the club has already contacted former premiership coach John Longmire.
“I haven’t spoken to him directly – when he made the decision to leave, we all thought he’ll have at least a year off,” Roos said.
“That year hasn’t really expired yet, and there’s been no need to ask the question because there have been no jobs available.
“I suspect that someone has made the phone call already from the Melbourne Football Club, because if they haven’t, they are bereft in their duties. I think they’ve made a call or will within the next 24 hours and get an answer either way.”
