New coach Steven King says a private meeting with max gawn shortly after his appointment crystallised how he would present change at Melbourne, setting the tone for an off-season focused on opportunity, workload management and integrating fresh personnel.
Max Gawn And The Clean Slate
King, 47, met the club skipper for dinner at the East End Wine Bar in Hawthorn a couple of days after taking the role. He says the conversation confirmed that even high-profile players viewed internal change as potentially threatening and that communicating a clean slate for everyone would be central to his early work at the club.
“He felt threatened by change, ” King said, describing the frank exchange that followed his initial media and club commitments. The coach framed the new regime as an equalising opportunity: veterans and younger players alike would need to prove their place under a fresh leadership approach.
Load Management, Bench Depth And Ruck Options
King flagged that managing the physical demands on his leading ruck would be a priority without pushing the 34-year-old away from the field. He acknowledged the long service and high output of max gawn, noting the player’s frustration when training is altered for managing load and stressing that any plan would be worked through in dialogue.
Structural changes to the interchange — specifically the extra bench spot — were identified as a concrete way to relieve pressure. The club added Max Heath to provide ruck support, and King said the extra interchange flexibility offers the chance to bring another ruck into games on a case-by-case basis. Early-season usage patterns, he added, will be shaped by how opposition teams deploy their rotations.
Leadership, Durability And Playing Style
The meeting also reinforced King’s respect for the skipper’s career and durability. The player equalled the record for All-Australian selections by being named for an eighth time in 10 years in 2025 and has multiple club best-and-fairest awards to his name. Since 2017 he has only once played fewer than 21 matches in a season, a statistic King cited when discussing how to prolong his effectiveness.
King emphasised that the ruck performs best when heavily involved on the ball and that preserving that role, rather than sidelining it through conservative load management, would be part of the coaching calculus. He made clear he is not in the business of managing the player out of his career and said he wants him to play for as long as feasible.
What Changed And What Remains Unclear
The confirmed changes are managerial — a new coach intent on resetting culture, an expanded interchange bench and the recruitment of additional ruck depth. How those elements translate into minutes played, planned rests or specific rotation patterns is not yet settled and will depend on early-season experiments and ongoing conversations between coach and player.
King’s arrival followed a commitment to finish finals duties with his previous club before taking the Melbourne job, and he has described a busy first off-season and pre-season as he prepares for his first match in charge at the MCG on Sunday.
Looking Ahead
The immediate task for the new coaching team is to convert the private alignment achieved with senior figures into a public, consistent plan that preserves on-field performance while managing long-term player welfare. How the extra bench spot will be used and whether the club opts for periodic rests, different training loads or a simple match-by-match rotation policy remains to be determined.
Players and supporters will be watching the opening rounds to see whether the clean-slate message results in visible changes to roles, selection and game management or whether the emphasis remains continuity around the established core. King has signalled a collaborative approach, and the early weeks of the season should clarify how that strategy plays out in practice.
