police were called to May’s house last month<\/a>, for undisclosed reasons.<\/p>\n“He’s on personal leave. That’s really as much as I can give you,” Gawn said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve reached out to him. We’re in dialogue.<\/p>\n
“I don’t reach out about anything I shouldn’t, and don’t want to go into his face. I just make sure that he’s healthy and well and he’s away from the club at the moment.”<\/p>\n
Max Gawn and Steven May after Melbourne’s loss to Brisbane in the 2022 semi-final. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
May, who is contracted until season’s end, was told to explore his options by new coach Steven King over the off-season after a disappointing 2025 campaign.<\/p>\n
But with no suitors, the full-back returned to Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The key defender was an All-Australian in Melbourne’s 2021 premiership season and again in 2022, and Gawn had faith May could yet contribute to the Demons’ 2026 campaign.<\/p>\n
When asked if he was hopeful May could come back and play again, Gawn said: “Always hopeful.<\/p>\n
“He’s a premiership player and a very, very decent full-back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So, yeah, hopefully that all gets worked out at some point.”<\/p>\n
Steven May (second from right) at the Melbourne team photo day in February 2026. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
When asked if he would look to regularly check in on May, Gawn said: “I do that with all my 45 players \u2013 and past players, to be fair \u2013 so you can add another 50-to-60 to that.<\/p>\n
“And then there might be some that have an asterisk to it that I need to make sure I’m doing more than once a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And right now, because Mayzy is taking time away from the club and I’m not seeing him face-to-face, he is someone I’m checking up on, yes.”<\/p>\n
Melbourne kicks off its 2026 season at the MCG against St Kilda on Sunday, March 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demons skipper Max Gawn hasn’t given up hope of taking the field with his premiership teammate Steven May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-499289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499289","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=499289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}