{"id":168283,"date":"2025-09-25T14:21:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T14:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/168283\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T14:21:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T14:21:16","slug":"simon-goodwin-pre-grand-final-bye-steven-may-hamstring-injury-2021-flag-melbourne-demons-lachie-neale-fit-tom-stewart-ruled-out-concussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/168283\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Goodwin, pre-grand final bye, Steven May hamstring injury, 2021 flag, Melbourne Demons, Lachie Neale fit, Tom Stewart ruled out concussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melbourne premiership coach Simon Goodwin has backed a pre-grand final bye, revealing Dees star Steven May wouldn\u2019t have played in the 2021 flag without one.<\/p>\n

May had injured his hamstring in the preliminary final, with scans later revealing the star defender suffered an eight-centimetre tear in his tendon.<\/p>\n

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In what was a Covid interrupted season, the AFL had sent the 2021 grand final to Perth \u2013 but with it came unique quarantine requirements that saw the pre-finals bye shifted to a pre-grand final bye to meet the WA Government\u2019s strict restrictions.<\/p>\n

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That break before the grand final was enough time for May to prove his fitness in \u201cextraordinary\u201d scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI experienced it (the pre-grand final bye), I loved it, I loved the build up. I loved the extra time to plan and get all the awards and everything out of the way through that period,\u201d Goodwin said on AFL 360.<\/p>\n

Steven May and Harrison Petty celebrate the 2021 premiership.Source: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that year we went straight into finals \u2013 there was no pre-finals bye. And we had the bye at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was brilliant. It gave everyone the chance to have the best players available.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteven May would not have played in that grand final (without the pre-grand final bye).<\/p>\n

\u201cTo get him out there and play was fantastic. It gives the best chance to build the spectacle that it deserves to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pre-finals bye debate flared once again last weekend when Cats star Tom Stewart was concussed<\/a> in his side\u2019s preliminary final over Hawthorn.<\/p>\n

As a result, he\u2019s unable to play for the AFL\u2019s mandatory 12-day period \u2013 and he\u2019s become the first men\u2019s player to miss a grand final as a result.<\/p>\n

The call to run the grand final risk on May was an \u201ceasy decision\u201d for him in the end, Goodwin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust is probably the biggest thing you can get \u2013 we had great success with our medical team and high performance team not only getting players up to play but also getting them to perform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe told Mayzey he had a slight hamstring strain \u2013 these are the protocols you\u2019re going to have to step through. He ticked off every single one of them.<\/p>\n

Michael Hibberd and Steven May celebrate the 2021 premiership with fans in Perth.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last one we wanted to make sure \u2013 and we were really fortunate we\u2019d played the Western Bulldogs two times already that season and the player that he was playing on, he\u2019d only ever done 68 metres of high speed in both those games. So one of the final check off points for us was you\u2019ve got to at least do 100m at high speed. These are the depths to build the trust \u2013 he was able to do that easily in the last training session.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause he was such a big man, it was really evident early on he had full strength \u2026 that was the thing that gave Darren (Burgess) and the medical team a lot of confidence to say let\u2019s give this a go.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it fails, we know we gave it a crack.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a situation the Lions now find themselves in with their star Lachie Neale<\/a>, who has been named only 19 days after he was ruled out for the season with a calf tear.<\/p>\n

Lachie Neale looking ‘unbelievable’ | 00:55<\/p>\n

While Jarrod Berry ruled himself out of the running with his own shoulder injury, Neale passed every test put in front of him.<\/p>\n

Goodwin could understand why the decision was made to name the two-time Brownlow Medallist for Saturday\u2019s decider.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time my biggest thing was to empower my staff \u2013 I was going to live by that decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey made a great decision \u2026 The athlete generally knows best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne premiership coach Simon Goodwin has backed a pre-grand final bye, revealing Dees star Steven May wouldn\u2019t have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,689,55,639,110265,100109,9203,106613,11288,4517,110268,25875,12097,1168,7804,99162,677,110266,46,71140,103469,19095,110267,8014,85,8018,12113,53149,3439,698],"class_list":["post-168283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-bye-call","tag-calf-tear","tag-catherine-healey","tag-day-coverage","tag-grand-final","tag-hamstring-injury","tag-historic-moment","tag-lachie-neale","tag-max-gawn","tag-medical-team","tag-melbourne-demons","tag-michael-hibberd","tag-oceania","tag-performance-team","tag-perth","tag-pre-finals-bye","tag-pre-grand-final-bye","tag-preliminary-final","tag-quarantine-requirements","tag-simon-goodwin","tag-sports","tag-steven-may","tag-tom-stewart","tag-training-session","tag-western-australia","tag-western-bulldogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}