YOU have to go back 23 years to find a team that's started a new season as badly as Melbourne. It was 1985, and St Kilda was in the middle of its bleakest era, in which it would win the wooden spoon four years in a row.

The Saints were smashed by 110 points in the first game against Sydney. Embarrassed to the tune of 140 against Carlton a week later. And cleaned up by 113 in round three against Richmond.

It was soul-destroying stuff. Something like Melbourne must be feeling right now, having lost its first two games of 2008 by an aggregate 199 points, and contemplating the nightmarish prospect of Geelong at Skilled Stadium on Sunday, the Cats at times yesterday reaching a level of football scarcely imaginable.

In fact, you might have to go back a lot further than a couple of decades to pinpoint a side that has looked this good this early in a new football year.

Sure, at this stage there have been plenty of greater teams than the Cats, the likes of the Brisbane Lions with three premiership cups to show for it.

But give it time. Because it's hard to think of a higher standard reached than that which Geelong turned on in the first 10½ minutes of yesterday's second quarter against a hapless Essendon.

It wasn't just the five goals the Cats booted in that amazing cameo. It wasn't only their complete domination of play, racking up 43 possessions to just 14 in that time. Nor even the ominous standard set by newcomers such as Harry Taylor, and continued improvement by the likes of Mathew Stokes.

It was the sheer faultlessness of it all. The precision passing, hard running, and desperate tackling of Gary Ablett, Jimmy Bartel, Cameron Ling, Joel Corey etc. If football can be played any better than the Cats played it during that little burst, it's hard to see just how.

And having built on its commanding lead over the Bombers long after it had the game well and truly won yesterday, it doesn't look like Geelong is in a particularly forgiving mood. Which makes the potential for carnage on Sunday so great, this mismatch could well warrant an R-rating.

Even the early odds look positively indecent, Melbourne likely to start at $10, Geelong $1.03, the shortest price in football betting history.

Just one thing might be able to prevent another slaughter, and it's not beleaguered new Demon coach Dean Bailey pulling any rabbits out of the hat.

Simply, it's Melbourne's most senior players actually girding their loins, being prepared to get their hands dirty, and showing at least an ounce of resilience that was sadly missing in Saturday's spineless capitulation to the Western Bulldogs.

Melbourne chairman Paul Gardner leapt to the defence of the Demons' fan base and its supposed half-heartedness on Saturday. A fair point, too. But if the accusation were true, could you blame them? They'd just be following the lead of some of the blokes they've been wasting their membership money on.

It's been years now that Melbourne has cried out for some genuine on-field leadership. Yet still the gaping void exists, apparently now larger than ever, the same faces continuing not to show sufficient stomach for the fight.

It was sad watching skipper David Neitz, an honourable exception here, having to drag himself from his rightful spot in front of goals to the opposite goal square on Saturday in a vain attempt to stem the bleeding, parked next to Cameron Bruce, wasted in a futile stopping role on Brad Johnson.

Neitz and James McDonald must feel like shaking the life out of some of their teammates at the moment. So would Nathan Jones, just 20, but more of a leader than some colleagues who were playing senior football when he was only seven years old.

That includes Russell Robertson, who had to be dragged by Bailey for some very untimely acts of ill-discipline. Ruckman Jeff White, who had another one of those Jeff White-type games, 20 possessions, seven marks, two goals and 15 hitouts, but an overall impact never matching those numbers. Brad Green, far too happy with another 20-disposal game for zero influence. Brad Miller, for whom an impressive start to his AFL career appears to have fizzled into nought.

And it includes Adem Yze and Brent Moloney, who couldn't even find their way into the 22 with their team short on experience and in desperate need of some football nous.

And what of the supposed future generation of official, or even spiritual leaders? Brock McLean has gone from obvious captaincy material to being banished from a seven-man leadership group after ritual off-field indiscretions. His on-field exploits aren't amounting to much at the moment, either.

Colin Sylvia doesn't have anywhere near the runs on the board McLean has, but is a fair rival in the off-field "bad boy" stakes.

We keep hearing about potential. Time to start delivering, Col. Perhaps the biggest worry is that Melbourne's rawest kids, the likes of Simon Buckley, Cale Morton, Jace Bode, Colin Garland and Isaac Weetra, will do their AFL apprenticeship believing the poor example they're being set by their senior peers is the norm.

They deserve better, the sort of consistently disciplined and performed profile that measuring stick Geelong now gets from skipper Tom Harley, Jimmy Bartel, Gary Ablett, Cameron Ling and co.

It's an example they'll be able to study first-hand at the Cattery on Sunday afternoon. Along with, if these two teams offer up the same sort of efforts as the weekend just gone, a monstering the likes of which AFL football has rarely seen.

Wins poorly constructed, but Saints have blocks to build

ST KILDA hasn't exactly set the world on fire in its two wins from two starts, the first a victory by a hair's breadth over Sydney in a game so uninspiring you'd only inflict a replay of it on anyone as a particularly ruthless form of corporal punishment, Saturday night's routine eclipse of Carlton scarcely any less ho-hum.

That might be doing coach Ross Lyon a big favour, such was becoming the potential for overcrowding on the Saints' sizeable pre-season bandwagon, a flood of popular support now tempered somewhat by the reminders of Geelong's seeming invincibility and Hawthorn's impressive start to the season.

But what might also be helping divert some attention from a potential rival to the Cats is the fact St Kilda's most impressive suit at present is not its most glamorous.

It's the Saints' potent-looking forward set-up that gets most of the public attention, that or a roll-call of midfield talent that takes in some of the game's finest talents. But St Kilda's defence has been a major part of its strength for a couple of years and seldom has it looked any better than in the 40-point defeat of the Blues.

In fact, if you're looking for comparisons between Geelong and St Kilda, the back line is a good place to start. Like the Cats, the Saints play it hard and close when they have to, curtailing their opponents' avenues to goal. Yet, like the Cats, they rebound and run with a zest that makes the back six worthy of as much defensive attention as their forwards.

Max Hudghton might just about be the most continually underrated AFL player of the past decade. He never seems to rate much of a mention, but few big-names kick bags of goals on the Saints' veteran, who left Brendan Fevola the latest frustrated customer.

The other St Kilda key defenders, Sam Fisher and Sam Gilbert, are critical in the defensive equation also, able to play tall and nullify, but nimble enough to fill the playmaking and linking role.

Then there's the purer run and long-kicking of Jason Gram, an invaluable addition to the blend since arriving from the Brisbane Lions, and the Clarke brothers, Xavier and Raphael, now thankfully over their injury woes and ready to remind the football world just how good they are.

Gram was a virtual replacement for the injured Xavier as a defensive runner. Sam Fisher has stepped seamlessly into the running tall role filled so capably by Matt Maguire until his shocking leg injury. Like Noah's Ark, the Saints now seem to have two of everything and a depth arguably the envy of every rival bar those amazing Cats.

St Kilda will get a lot better than it has shown in 2008. But its further improvement won't be coming from its defence, which can't possibly do anything more than it is now.

Blow the whistle on the rules not the umpires

LIKE the coaches who prefer not to argue the toss with the AFL umpiring department after a particularly frustrating run with the whistle blowers, I tend to shrug my shoulders whenever the latest decision-making controversy crops up.

Umpiring clearly isn't "worse than ever", as is continually and hysterically suggested, the three umpires obviously picking up far more infringements than one or two used to. It's the laws of the game that are the problem. In fact, you often suspect the umps get as frustrated as the rest of us by what they are forced to pay at times.

Which is why Mick Malthouse might get a sympathetic hearing from umpires director Jeff Gieschen when he makes the phone call he threatened after the Magpies' agonising loss to Brisbane at the Gabba last Friday night. It's the football lawmakers with whom Malthouse needs a stern word.

Friday night's game underlined how philosophically out of kilter the rigidity of contemporary umpiring can be.

Friday was good, old-fashioned stuff between the Lions and Magpies, the greasy and wet conditions making the crashing of bodies and slip-sliding more of a constant and, in those circumstances, there surely has to be more margin, not even for error, but simple human mechanics.

The crucial free kick received by Brisbane's Anthony Corrie for a high tackle after sliding into a pack, and that paid to Jonathan Brown barely a minute later, simply weren't in keeping with the physical nature of the contest.

Backmen seem most likely to pay the penalty for over-policing. Ask St Kilda's Max Hudghton, who did everything humanly possible to spoil Carlton's Brendan Fevola on a quick, low lead on Saturday night. At speed and virtually horizontal to the ground, Hudghton managed to reach around and fist the ball clear. The consequence was always going to be contact. Yet not contact that deprived Fevola of a mark. It was Hudghton's talent that did that.

That's the real pity here. Great defensive play may be rendered redundant because of incidental contact which human physiology dictates cannot be avoided. A free kick might be technically correct. That doesn't alter the fact that it's morally wrong.