Having already spoken about the “mental scarring” that some of his players are still battling from the past, the Melbourne coach was unambiguous on Tuesday in blaming the tanking controversy of 2009 for creating a negative mindset that he believes still hangs over the club.

Melbourne received heavy sanctions and former coach Dean Bailey and football operations manager Chris Connolly were found to have “acted in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the AFL".

The club was not officially tagged by the AFL with the stigma of trying to lose games on purpose in order to secure high draft picks, however Roos said that is clearly what happened in 2009.

“What I will say is that tanking has put the club where it is,” Roos said.

“I will put that fairly and squarely on the map," he said.

“If we want to be in the same position in eight years, then I will tank, because now seven years down the path and we have not recovered from that era.”

Roos, who was coach at Sydney during the period in question, said he did not blame the previous administration for the decisions they made in 2009, believing the incentive of priority draft picks was attractive to at least half of the competition.

But he insisted no club, and especially not the Demons, would ever again take the risk of creating a losing culture in an effort to secure better draft picks.

The priority pick system that was in place in 2009 has also been removed by the AFL.
 
"The carrot was there and we all know that teams were playing for ladder positions in reverse order," Roos said.

"Half of the footy world thought it was good management, including myself, but having taken over the club now that was involved in it, I can look back now and say it won't happen again," he said.

“If someone thinks I am going to put them in a position to be in the same spot in another eight years, then they are crazy.”

Roos said teams not in finals contention were now more concerned about using the latter rounds as a way to build momentum and game plan chemistry for the following year.

"Teams really want to set good habits and want for their young guys to come in and play well, so I think this year you're going to have a really fierce competition to the end, which is terrific," the coach said.

Roos’ candid comments came the morning after former Melbourne champion Garry Lyon implored his old club to stop making excuses for the players by blaming the mental scarring of the so-called “tanking era”.

While acknowledging that new coach Paul Roos had made worthy progress with the team this year, he did not believe the culture that might have been created in 2009 had anything to do with the Demons' embarrassing performance against Brisbane on Sunday.

Roos brought the club’s tanking era back into the media conversation after his team's loss to the Lions by referring to the fact some players “might not be able to get over what has happened in the past”.

But Lyon, a former captain and best and fairest, said Melbourne supporters were sick of officials making excuses for fundamental skill errors, some “as bad as I've ever seen” committed by players who were not even on the list in 2009.

Speaking over minutes of footage of players making shocking mistakes from Sunday’s game, Lyon said those errors had nothing to do with culture, and four of the players he specifically mentioned – Luke Tapscott, Dean Terlich, Jeremy Howe and Dom Tyson all arrived after the “tanking” period in question.

“Is this about the culture of a footy club, or is this about (the fact) blokes just can’t get it done when there is a little bit of pressure on them?” Lyon asked on Channel Nine.

“At some stage this footy club and all involved have got to stop making excuses for this playing group. Have a look at this stuff – it is under-15s,” he said.

“I don’t want to hear about a culture of five years ago in relation to this. This sort of stuff needs to be sheeted back to the players – not about what happened five years ago."

Highly-respected Melbourne chief executive Peter Jackson has already spoken this year about the need to change a “toxic culture” at the club.

Only nine of the 22 players who represented Melbourne on Sunday were on the list in 2009, one being co-captain Nathan Jones, yet if there had been a “toxic” culture created during that time – as Roos and Jackson insist – it is harder then to pinpoint how long it has lingered and whether, and in what ways, it has affected players who have arrived since then.

Roos said he felt that period had created a mindset where the players were almost “waiting to lose”.

Lyon said enough was enough when it came to blaming the sins of the past.

“These are highly-paid professional players who go to work Monday to Friday and get all the resources in the world thrown out them – let’s not makes excuses about what happened five years ago,” he said.

“Paul Roos would know more about the footy club than I. He has been there and immersed himself in it, and if he’s thinking that, then fair enough. But I’m not buying that.”

Jones, who arrived at the club during the 2005 draft, said it was “quite possible” that some players had been scarred by past failings.

“In the position we find ourselves in, it’s a real belief thing,” he told Channel Nine.

“It’s definitely a mental thing - to be 13 points up in yesterday's game and let it go, our skills were deplorable on the day and really cost us. It was really embarrassing."