Simon Goodwin, just the fourth premiership coach in the fabled history of the Melbourne Demons, has been sacked with immediate effect, after a miserable 2025 campaign.
A victory over the cellar-dwelling West Coast Eagles was ultimately not enough to extend the tenure of the 2021 premiership coach, just a week after being on the wrong side of the largest overturned three-quarter-time deficit in V/AFL history.
The code's oldest club will now begin its search for its 32nd head coach, but just who is in the running?
1. Nathan Buckley
The former Collingwood figurehead has been out of the coaching ranks since 2021, carving out a career in media in the years since.
The 218 games he coached for the black and white culminated in a winning percentage of 54%, in a tenure that spanned multiple iterations of a playing list.
While the ultimate success famously eluded him as player and coach of the biggest club in the land, his ability to straddle eras, and rebuild cultures, paints him as a viable option, given the period of turnover Melbourne's list is seemingly in the midst of currently.
Buckley has spent much of this year refusing to rule himself out of upcoming coaching searches, such as Tasmania's inaugural appointment, but tactically, he may not be the breath of fresh air the Dees need.
Dour defensive game plans characterised much of his stint at Collingwood, and given the major shortcoming of Melbourne's on-field performance since the drought-breaking premiership victory of 2021 has been an inability to connect forward of centre, this may count against the 2003 Brownlow Medallist.
