Results like this can maim playing reputations, destroy club morale and kill coaching careers.

In fact, Geelong's 186-point victory (yep, that'd be 31 goals) over Melbourne at Skilled Stadium today will surely seal Dean Bailey's fate as Melbourne's coach.

There has been discussion for much of this season about whether Bailey is the man to lead this team forward, to a time in two or three years when this band of high-draft picks and precocious talents would finally start to realise its slowly emerging potential.

Bailey had his supporters, but some influential club figures such as president Jim Stynes appeared to have their reservations.

Now, though, his cards are marked. Melbourne will be looking for a new coach in 2012.

It's not necessarily the margin of defeat - although that was obviously horrific - it was more the lame, limp-wristed way the Demons allowed themselves to be bullied around. Sure, they were younger, smaller, less experienced and on the most difficult assigment in football, but to be beaten by 31 goals at AFL level? That just won't be condoned by a board sick of failure and desperate to deliver to long-suffering supporters some evidence of a bright future.

The Dees are not the first team to be hammered at Skilled Stadium; in fact, Geelong has diposed of its last 27 opponents at the ground once known as Kardinia Park.

But none of those defeats have been quite the cakewalk, the procession, the training run that we witnessed today. Geelong's quarter-by-quarter goal tallies were: eight, 12, eight, nine. Which adds up to the grand total of 37.11 (233), a score that was compiled by 14 separate goalkickers, including Steve Johnson with seven. Melbourne kicked 7.5 (47).

For Cats' fans, yes, that amounted to a beautiful set of numbers.

Things have been looking sick at Melbourne since Round 15 when they were beaten by 10 goals by the Western Bulldogs in a Friday night game. They then had a bye, followed by a 21-point win at home to Port Adelaide. Last week, though, the Dees went down to Hawthorn by 54 points and now this debacle.

Bailey's win-loss record after almost four seasons now stands at 22-59 with two draws. Not so bad with a young, developing list but, after today, not good enough to guarantee him an extended tenure.

In a day of records, some of which will haunt Melbourne for a long time:

* Melbourne nearly 'beat' their own record of the VFL/AFL's heaviest defeat - of 190 points, set when beaten by Fitzroy in round 17, 1979 at Waverley Park. Today's 186-point shellacking means they now take the silver medal as well.

* It was Geelong's biggest winning margin in 114 years of VFL/AFL competition, eclipsing its 164-point victory over the Brisbane Bears at the Gabba in 1992.

* The Cats' score was the fourth-highest in the competition's history. That record is 37.17 (239), which Geelong set in that 1992 game against Brisbane.

* When Tom Hawkins kicked his fifth, and Geelong's 37th goal, with two minutes remaining, the Cats had equalled the highest number of goals scored in a game.

* The win boosted Geelong's percentage by 12.5 points to 150.97 while Melbourne's dropped to 86.82 - a decrease of 10.17.

* After kicking 12 goals in the second quarter (kicking into the wind), Geelong surged to a 114-point buffer at half-time, the second-largest half-time margin in VFL/AFL history and just six points shy of the record set by the Brisbane Bears against the Sydney Swans at the Gabba in 1993.

* Their 142-point lead at the final change which was the third-highest three-quarter-time margin in the competition's history.

* The Demons managed only 43 possessions in that horror second quarter (Geelong had 147).

* Star midfielder, and former Cat, Brent Moloney was subbed out of the game at half-time after failing to register a disposal, not a single one.

That was the disaster set out in brutal facts and figures. But there was a human toll as well. And that will be realised sometime in the next month with the announcement that Dean Bailey will not have his contract renewed for 2012. And the search for his replacement will begin, surreptitiously, as early as this week.