The Demons don't deserve the concession.
The other clubs don't deserve to be forced by this club to sacrifice, yet again, their own positioning at the draft table.
It is not the competition's problem that the only thing Melbourne can boast about being the best at is sustained mediocrity.
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Melbourne is continuing to lobby the AFL to use its discretionary powers to grant a priority pick, and it is a request that remains under AFL consideration.
No one could begrudge new CEO Peter Jackson for exhausting his options on AFL assistance, for he is one of the shrewdest officials in the game and he knows that the mess he has inherited is going to take years to remove.
Jackson has already secured $2.7 million in strings-attached emergency funding from Headquarters, including $1.5 million in cash to pay out staff.
But the facts are all that is required when analysing Melbourne's plight, and the facts prove that this club has no right to more draft bonuses.
It received a priority pick in 2008, at No.17 overall which it used on Sam Blease. It received another one the following year, at No.1 overall, and used it for Tom Scully, a player it was unable to keep after just two years.
In losing Scully to expansion club GWS, it gained a couple of first-round draft selections as compensation, and immediately jumped at using that compensation to help land Jesse Hogan, a teenager who will next season get to display the reasons for the sky-high boom that has been placed on him.
The father-son rule allowed the club to land a gun in Jack Viney, after a convenient little arrangement which saw GWS and Gold Coast fail to bid for him with their lucrative picks.
Over its dreadfully pathetic recent past, Melbourne has been well compensated for its inadequacies by the system's workings.
In February last year, the AFL tore up the rule that guaranteed poorly-performed football clubs a priority selection in the national draft.
But in scrapping the rule, the AFL gave itself the right to exercise "discretion" in providing a concession pick. In other words, wriggle room.
But this problem is not the doing of the AFL. It is purely Melbourne's.
Now it is time for the club to fix its problems itself. Time to really harden up, and to make well-researched, occasionally ruthless decisions.
No more money handouts, no more free draft picks, no more woe-is-us attitude.
