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Melbourne have made five changes to their coaching structure as they aim for a strong finish to a disastrous season.

Melbourne have overhauled their coaching staff as they try to salvage a strong finish from their so-far disastrous AFL season.

After the breakthrough preliminary final appearance last September, the Demons' season of great expectations has floundered.

They are coming out of their mid-season break in third-last spot with only three wins from 12 games ahead of Saturday's game against Fremantle at the MCG.

Five assistant coaches are now in new roles and Melbourne also have made changes to their support staff ahead of performance boss Dave Misson leaving for Canada later this year.

Coach Simon Goodwin has said in the the last few weeks that there is still plenty to play for this year, despite their poor form.

"When you identify those opportunities, you've got a choice to make. You either do it now or you do it at the end of the year," football boss Josh Mahoney said of the coaching changes.

"Our mindset is we're not wasting a minute on getting better.

"We want to attack these last 10 home and away games and give ourselves the best chance to maximise that."

The most prominent change is former Western Bulldogs senior coach Brendan McCartney moving from their defensive coach to mentoring all AFL and VFL assistants.

Troy Chaplin is now the standalone backline coach, while Jade Rawlings is no longer coaching VFL affiliates Casey and instead will be in charge of their forwards.

Max Rooke has moved from forwards coach to a development role and Sam Radford will take over from Rawlings as the head coach at Casey.

Ahead of Misson's departure, Dr. Zeeshan Arain will become their head of medical services and Phil Merriman will be the head of strength and conditioning.

"We knew early days that David Misson was leaving at the end of the year and we really didn't want to get to a stage where all we get out of that opportunity was just replace Dave in the role," Mahoney said.

"We've got a structure we'll put as an interim structure for the remainder of the year and we think it's an opportunity to look for improvements, but also setting us up for next year when Misso isn't here.

"Misso will now oversee the implementation of this structure and complete a variety of specific initiatives for the rest of this year."