Former Melbourne captain Brad Green has admitted the Demons' decision to sack coach Dean Bailey back in 2011 was one of the club's biggest mistakes.
Bailey - who passed away in 2014 after a battle with lung cancer - was sacked after 83 games as the coach following Melbourne's record breaking 186-point loss to Geelong at Simonds Stadium in round 19.
Green spoke about the decision on SEN's Melbourne podcast Dee Tales, telling the show it was a massive error.
“I reckon it was a real shame that we, and Melbourne got rid of him, because no doubt he could coach,” Green said.
“I reckon it was one of Melbourne’s biggest mistakes getting rid of Dean Bailey.”
“Dean was an unbelievable tactical coach.
“The nous that he had on the game and where the game is now, I think he was before his time in the way that he developed us to play
“Now that I’m in coaching, I can see the way that Dean was thinking. When you’re a player you sort of brush it off a little bit, but the way that he told us to play was the way the modern game is played now.”
Green also spoke about the reasoning behind fronting the media before Bailey was sacked after that match.
“Whenever you put out that performance, it comes on the playing group, and me being the captain, wanting to get on the front foot and let people know that the performance that we put out there today wasn’t acceptable and we need to be strong as a playing group and get right behind the club and Dean, because we knew the affairs that were happening,” Green added.
“You look back at those times and the way that footy was portrayed – yeah it was a bad loss, but we were still only one-game out of the eight...I still find it bewildering in how it all unfolded.
“Even after the press conference we sat in the change-room and we talked to each other and he basically said to me that he thinks they’re going to get me. So he knew it was coming.
“Once you put in performances like that, as we know in any industry, you’re going to come under fire, but I would have thought the board would have been strong enough to get through that.”