“Up to no good”: How pre-season player behaviour highlighted Schwarz' Dees concern

Melbourne great David Schwarz admits his worries about his old club’s 2024 campaign began in the pre-season, when he personally witnessed players “up to no good”.

Schwarz did not elaborate on what he witnessed, but coupled the thought in with revelations of Christian Petracca’s reported frustrations with the club.

“I’d back Petracca in 100 per cent. When you talk about professional footballers in the AFL, he is without a doubt one of the most professional sports people we’ve had come through the doors,” he told SEN WA Breakfast.

“The pre-season that Melbourne endured with Clayton Oliver, there was reports of other players badly misbehaving – and I witnessed a couple of them first-hand – absolutely the fans and the sponsors deserve to know what’s going on.

“When Melbourne won the flag in 2021, there were people popping up left, right and centre to take credit for the win. Now that things are going bad, absolute crickets.

“Melbourne people should be disappointed and I don’t blame Petracca for one moment. I’m as gutted as anyone when you hear those reports, but I’m not surprised.

“They had a camp down in Anglesea and I live in Geelong and I just happened to be out and saw some players and they were up to no good,” Schwarz continued.

“We probably don’t need to back over old ground, but when you see things happening and you just see that sort of behaviour, you know things aren’t good behind the scenes.

“And I know boys have nights out, but this was a pattern of behaviour… When you’re an ex-player, you get information. You’re often hearing what’s going on and the pre-season was not satisfactory. It was a piss-take in a lot of ways.

“If you don’t prepare well and don’t do a full pre-season and don’t prepare for a long assault, you’re not going to get through the year and that’s clearly what’s happened with Melbourne and players are falling by the wayside.”

When pressed if he had made the club aware of what he saw, Schwarz said he and many other former Demons regularly discuss these issues.

“I spoke to a lot of ex-players about it. I spoke to influential people within that ex-playing group. I made it very known,” he said.

“Melbourne are aware that their behaviour over a 24-month period hasn’t been conducive to their performances.”

Melbourne is set to miss the eight this season, sitting on 40 points with two rounds to play.

They released a statement on Tuesday shooting down any suggestions that they would entertain trading Petracca, though did not deny his frustrations.