Mick Stinear chats to his team during the AFLW Preliminary Final match between Melbourne and North Melbourne at Ikon Park on November 22, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos

MELBOURNE coach Mick Stinear was coy when asked about his future in the aftermath of the Demons’ agonising 10-point preliminary final loss to North Melbourne. 

The out-of-contract Stinear has been automatically linked to the newly vacant Geelong job, given he lives on the Surf Coast and has been commuting to AAMI Park and Casey Fields for the past nine years.

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He has been on single-season contracts for the last few years, keen to reassess after every season given his young children.

“In terms of my future, I probably will just take a breath now, get back and support the team, and then just spend some time with the family and process over the next few days,” Stinear said.

“It’s obviously a big commitment to be a senior coach. I want to make sure I’m the right person for it, it’s the right thing to do by the family. So I’ll go and have those discussions with my wife, but I haven’t got any answers for you today, I’m sorry. But just I’m really proud about the group and you couldn’t ask for a better crew to coach.”

Stinear said he was “proud and emotional” after Melbourne fell just short of knocking the Roos off their 26-game winning streak and missed out on a Grand Final berth.

Indicative of just how dominant North Melbourne has been this year, the 10-point margin is the closest any side has reached this year, with only Adelaide last season to have dropped below that mark.

“I feel like the team gave it everything, you couldn’t ask for any more of them. Feel like we prepared well during the week, they really bought into how we wanted to play and get after it today. We respect the work that North has done, but today was about us and getting after it and setting the tone. I thought the team did that really well,” Stinear said.

“We had that little lapse in the first quarter and let them back in, obviously good sides do that. It’s probably the third quarter – now you get the time to reflect – thought we controlled the quarter for the majority, but didn’t convert. It would have been nice to extend that lead a little bit, but then they flexed a bit of muscle in that last quarter, they defended a lot better and took away some easy marks. 

“Then we just fatigued a little, and they took things up a notch and we were just hanging in there. Thought we defended really well, but then that dam wall broke towards the end and then, I guess, their quality stepped up and having the week off probably showed in those dying minutes. 

“I’m really proud of our group, but we came in to win and we weren’t able to do that, but, proud of our team and what they produced this year.”

Maeve Chaplin was outstanding on return from a two-week hamstring injury, with Stinear revealing she had overcome an additional setback on Monday.

“It was probably looking highly unlikely on Monday. She spent a ridiculous amount of time in a hyperbaric chamber and red-light therapy and anything you can think of,” Stinear said.

“It was such a huge effort from her and she’s such a spiritual player for the team while they love playing with her and she has a huge impact, not just with her footy ability, but just her leadership.”

North Melbourne counterpart Darren Crocker said while his side took most of the game to get it on their terms, the players embraced the challenge and rose to the occasion.

“Mick’s a really good coach, really rate him and their coaching panel. They plan well and it was a real challenging game for us,” Crocker said.

“They controlled the footy too much for our liking, and it’s very hard to pressure when they’re controlling the footy and taking uncontested marks. 

“They [were] also getting some strong numbers behind the footy, making it quite difficult when we were going inside forward 50 at times. Tahlia Randall was versus two players, Emma King had a number of players, battling outnumbered for most of the game. It stifled the game a little bit, but gee, the response at three-quarter time was just so strong from our players.

“The last quarter was the way that we’d spoken about how we wanted the game to look like from the word go, but it took us a while to build into that, and get the game to look that way. Maybe Melbourne ran out of a bit of steam – I know it’s a real benefit, having a week off coming into a prelim – but all credit to them, they were very good today.”