“Neeld and I never got along” reveals former Dee

2011 Melbourne best and fairest winner Brent Moloney has opened up on the troubling relationship he shared with his final coach at the Demons, Mark Neeld.

Moloney played 122 of his 166 career AFL games with Melbourne between 2005 and 2012, having started his career out at Geelong in 2003 after being recruited from the prosperous Geelong Falcons under-18s side.

The now 33-year-old was delisted by the Demons in 2012 after spending a year at the club under Neeld, despite winning the Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott Medal the year before while serving as the club’s vice-captain – a role which was stripped from him when Neeld arrived at the club.

The largely unpopular decision to delist Moloney saw him make his way to the Brisbane for two years, managing 21 games before retiring in 2014 due to an Achilles tendon injury.

Moloney has now spoken for the first time on his relationship with Neeld since posting an image to social media captioned with the words ‘Karma is a b-tch’ shortly after Neeld was sacked in June 2013, having only won five of the 33 matches he coached at the helm of the Dees.

The former midfielder revealed that while leaving the club he loved so dearly was the hardest decision he has ever had to make, he was forced to do so due to the relationship he shared with Neeld.

“That was the hardest decision I’ve had to make, leaving the club that you love and you’re so entrenched in,” Moloney said on SEN’s Dee Tales podcast.

“We just didn’t get along. I’m not sure what it was, I won the best and fairest the year before and he comes on board and takes all the leadership stuff away from me.

“These things happen in footy clubs. Some coaches don’t like players.”

Moloney believes that Neeld never quite liked him as a player from the moment he stepped into the club, revealing that he felt shunned by the then incoming coach even after he had won the best and fairest in 2011, the first time he and Neeld met.

He believes the core of the issues came down to the new game style Neeld instituted at Melbourne, attempting to make the side mimic Collingwood’s premiership-winning gameplan from 2010 - where Neeld served as an assistant coach before making his way to the Dees.

Moloney believes this unsuccessful change of philosophy set the Demons back multiple years.

“He didn’t want me to stand still at stoppages and I felt that I had to be on the move…I felt that if you were on the move, it was harder to be tackled when you get the ball moving forward. We were butting heads all year,” the former Demon said.

“He wanted me to play a certain way and I didn’t believe in their gameplan. They wanted to kick wide, down the line and to the boundary. We’ve drafted, for the past five or six years, attacking players who could go inside using the corridor and very skilful players, and then suddenly they wanted us to go wide.

“That might have worked at Collingwood but we weren’t Collingwood. We didn’t have the marking players to go down the line and take a mark. We had developing young forwards like Jack Watts.

“It definitely did take the club back a few years and I thought ‘I’m out of here, I’m not enjoying my football.’

“I absolutely loved the club, I didn’t want to go anywhere but I couldn’t play for him. I thought I needed a fresh start.”

However Moloney says that he holds no hard feelings against his former coach, calling these sorts of problems the reality many footballers have to deal with.

“I don’t have a problem with Mark. If I saw him now I’d say g’day to him,” he said.

“That’s footy. These things happen in everyone’s life.”

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