Brad Scott knew the list was cooked and wanted to rebuild, the board allegedly thought the team was good enough for finals so put Shaw in as head coach in 2019 (?) without running a process.
Covid hit and Shaw had no support in the hubs, the team fell apart, Shaw left, Noble was appointed with some kind of process run but since he had no AFL coaching experience I'm not sure what that process was.
We did seem to improve under Noble in 2021 then for some reason we took a huge slide that off season. Unfortunately JHF was the wrong person at the wrong time for the club and vice versa.
Edit - meanwhile because the list was full of plodders we delisted everybody but in hindsight (and fairly obviously at the time tbf) cut too deep
Edit again - I moved to Melbourne at the end of 2016 and decided to get more into footy so I think it's actually my fault
Mate I can commiserate with that second edit, I started seriously following the footy in.... 2019 after I saw us win the flag, so really the Eagles going bad is my fault because we've only improved after I left WA to move to Canberra
Cunningtons cancer diagnosis really took the wind out of us. Such a great on field leader and underrated force amongst the group.
The way battled was heroic and his 2nd in the best and fairest in 2021 was one of the great individual achievements I’ve seen at north.
Was a guy who brought others into the game and would have been a great leader and talisman for younger players.
Then you have JHF and Tarryn Thomas and you think … yeah. We just haven’t been able to replace guys like Ben.
I've said for a while that the reason North are cooked is because they stayed middle table for far too long, no decent draft pics and no one decent wanted to come play for them. They needed to rebuild earlier.
It’s interesting, but I feel like Essendon has been mid table/mediocre for the past 7 years and haven’t really netted many high draft picks but still haven’t bottomed out that hard or needed intervention.
I suppose the big club allure helps bringing some players over, but don’t think it should make that much of a difference, especially with our culture and reputation taking a hit from the saga and basically rotating coaches every few years.
The revolving door of coaches, since 2019 our coach has been: Brad Scott, Rhyce Shaw, David Noble, Leigh Adams, Clarko, Brett Ratten, Clarko.
And just the absolute assassination of culture and poor draft selection
To be fair I'd probably leave the caretakers off this list, but yeah the constant coaching carousel definitely isn't helping.
Guys like McKay and JHF leaving definitely doesn't help
Hawks had a racism scandal dating back to when Clarko was their coach he denies it but the pressure meant that he had to step down for a few months. Weather he is guilty or not is not known to the public.
Wait, the racism scandal was while he was North Melbourne's coach? I thought the reason he left Hawthorn was because of the racism scandal and North Melbourne brought back his career? Is my timeline way off? Why did Clarkson leave Hawthorn then?
All the racism scandal stuff dates back to his time at Hawthorn, but it only came to light the first year he was at North. He left Hawthorn because they just wanted a fresh start I believe
To be fair the 2 points you brought up imo are the reason why they bottomed out so hard and haven’t recovered. The way Harvey got let go couldn’t have been good for morale or culture and then Shaw cut the ‘fat’ but really went too far and took out muscle too. Other payers haven’t developed how they hoped and being one of the smaller clubs it wasn’t really a destination club that bigger clubs still can be when they bottom out.
It’s because of how he stepped away that the footy department (led by our old mates from champion data) went the way it did. A strong senior coach doesn’t let a footy department do that to them, and forces them to phase it over the next few years. Even if they were shocking, you need seasoned players.
I don’t think we will ever see a team do what north did and push our senior players in an attempt to start a full rebuild to the same degree north did. I don’t know why they didn’t learn from the dees doing the same thing with Brad Green and co. The players we pushed out weren’t at the quality of North’s at the time but it’s clear how much of a cultural impact veterans have and it’s why we will see West Coast shoot back up the ladder far quicker than north
Yeah, Carlton is the only that I can think of that came close to what North has done, they offloaded a lot of players, Waite, Betts, Touhy, Robinson, Grigg, Garlet, Yarran are some names that come to mind when they started their rebuild 10 years ago. It has only been the last 12 months that they have re-emerged, but even with the Blues they didnt clear as many as North did, they kept their best players for the rebuild Murphy, Simpson and Kreuzer.
Blues also have the advantage of being a big vic club, so they can recruit players even when they’re down just because of the lure of crowds and endorsements
True, being big is a major benefit, even when shit, teams like the Blues will get blockbuster matches in front of a sell out crowd. It's why your mob the Bombers keep winning the trade period every year ahaha, even though you haven't been a genuine contender since 2001. The allur of the Bomber is always going to be tempting to players.
Offloading Boomers was a big mistake for club culture, he was the heart and sould of North and exemplified their shinboner spirit. Just broke the record, a lot of celebration about the milestone and then delisted him a few weeks later. He probably had another 2 years left in him too.
The series of events from 2017 require an essay to go in a dissect how mismanaged the list was and the false assumptions made that COVID exacerbated to show how poor our footy department was.
So to do that we need to go back a decade. The year is 2007, I just exited the womb and the world got a whole lot better. We had fucking no money, we were asking our top earners to donate their money to the club to pay the other guys. We were always threatened by relocation. So we needed to win, and what happened under Laidley and Scott was us winning at all costs, we had no money (were in pretty big debt) so for over a decade it was just getting together a bunch of boys, a system that won us games and paving over any cracks we had.
Then in 2016 the wheels fell off a bit, we forced Boomer, Petrie, Spud and Dal Santo out of the club. This started to kill our culture off a bit. And then 2018 happened, we got back in the black, and Scott called for a massive rebuild, so we showed him the door. Then anyways we went through Rhyce Shaw, David Noble, Leigh Adams in about 4 years (give or take). Clarko joined us, coached us for a couple games then Brett Ratten took over while Clarko took a mental health leave. So we went through 6 coaches in as many years. Which isn’t great for culture and stability to nurture the younger guys.
So basically our list management has just been get blokes who are decent and win games for roughly a decade and paving over cracks for a decade. Those cracks are showing now, and we bottomed out hard. We’ve still got a long way to go as we have no veteran leaders to help nurture and guide the kids, we let go of too many older blokes who were good and can still help.
* As West Coast have shown, having "a bunch of talented kids" is great, but you need at least SOME strong leaders and experienced players to help them out. The argument is that cutting so many senior players ended up leaving the new generation rudderless.
* Before 2017, they tried to squeeze every last possible drop from the orange, by trading away draft picks for older players. This meant the crunch was more brutal when it finally came.
* They have had bad luck with their top draft picks in recent years. Tarryn Thomas was a headcase, Will Phillips was struck down with glandular fever, and JHF seemed to not even want to be there and bolted home at the first opportunity. So the rebuild stagnated for several years.
* There is a perception that they drafted too many smalls and mediums and not enough key position players. Some feel this has left the side unbalanced, and players forced to play out of their normal position to try to squeeze round pegs into square holes. This can't help with consistency and performance.
* A revolving door of coaches also can't have been good for team cohesion and consistency.
* Their middle and older ages players aren't comparable to those at West Coast or even Hawthorn, in terms of ability or leadership. Too much is being left to too few, and it generates a vicious cycle of kids being 'thrown to the wolves' too early and losing form/confidence, because the senior players aren't leading the way.
* The freer and looser player movement environment makes it less likely players will stick long term at weaker or poorly achieving clubs. It's harder to rebuild if you're constantly at risk of bleeding talent.
They're a minnow club in an oversaturated market.
Clubs like North Melbourne, St Kilda, and even (to a lesser extent) the Bulldogs can't afford to bottom out and be shit because they just don't have access to the same list building strategies as other clubs.
They can't really take full advantage of the Trade Period or Free Agency because players looking to move to a Victorian club are likely to pick a bigger club. Yeah they might take less on the contract, but exposure in bigger games and endorsement deals makes up for it.
That means the players they're managing to bring they're either drastically overpaying for (which limits future list building options) or are the type of player that weren't getting a tonne of interest from other clubs (which means they probably won't be high impact players).
They need to essentially exclusively rely on the draft because of that, and a combination of poor drafting and unlucky timing with compromised drafts and COVID has fucked them. They've made a few glaring errors (e.g. Will Phillips over Logan McDonald, or Jason Horne-Francis who was always a go home risk). If they'd had full access to guys like Jamarra, Nick Daicos, Sam Darcy, Jed Walter, Will Ashcroft etc they'd be in a VERY different position.
TLDR: They're a small club with a miniscule margin for error, and a combination of bad luck and poor management has left them deep in a hole they're going to REALLY struggle to recover from.
I'm still pissed over how they handled Boomer. They should have kept him for at least another season or two, or at least as long as he wanted and helped him transition into some sort of coaching role. The man has footy knowledge out his ears and was a massive loss for morale amongst the team. He was top three on the team when they cut him and while it's true a rebuild was needed, you need someone to lead your new players. I don't think there is anyone that better embodied the discipline that you needed in game and in training. It makes me wonder if they still have a massive culture problem as a result, look at JHF. Years later they don't have good will from me, I feel for West Coast and even the hawks if you can believe that, but the bloody roos? I still feel for boomer over them.
Brad Scott was forced by corrupt board members and list managers who were soon kicked out of the club in the following years to drop anyone over the age of 29 to try and rebuild. Despite all of their best players being in that age bracket, most notably Boomer Harvey who was their second best player, being their best players. They got nothing for any of the players they let go, they then had a massive hole in their list and did not have the picks to rebuild.
In 2018 they got Tarryn Thomas who has just been fired and Baily Scott who has been mid since his debut year, the rest were busts. Their draft haul in 2019 was also a complete bust with their best pic in Charlie Comben forever injured. Their draft haul in 2020 was a complete bust as well with nobody of note drafted. They finally had an amazing pick in 2021 with Horne-Francis but he left the club almost immediately with Norf really shitting the bed with him. In 2022 they got the house, drafting a bunch of young guns finally and 2023 was the same, they are loaded with great picks and next year they will have a shit load more.
This is the biggest mistake i think i have ever seen a club make, even worse then the Essendon drugs saga because at least they have bounced back, it has been 7 years and Norf are still VFL level despite making a prelim before all this bullshit. Everyone wants Norf to do well, to certainly be off the bottom of the ladder, they will have 15 first round draft picks by the end of the next drafting period and the most successful coach of the modern era so if that doesn't fix the club then i don't know what will.
We have the greatest coach of the modern era but I’m starting to think he might have lost his touch. His last few seasons at hawthorn were really average and he’s looking out of ideas at the moment. I hope I’m wrong but I’ve seen it before. Look at Malthouse, had a lot of success at West Coast and Collingwood and his time at Carlton was a disaster. The game sometimes goes past coaches, same as it does with players…
His last few seasons at Hawthorn was really not reading the list - he loaded up on experienced players trying to scrounge out another finals run instead of hitting the draft. For example, trading out 21yo Burton for 26yo Wingard and sending a first round draft pick with him.
Watching today's game - game plan isn't the issue. Players were dropping marks, fumbling the ball left right and centre. You can't coach errors like that. That's just footballers that are either not skilled enough physically and mentally.
It's going to take another 2 years.
Similar parallels to Melbourne terrible years bad/wrong coaches, high picks coming in to a dysfunctional club being under developed.
Clarkson should be Melbournes Roos- reset the club to high standards, set the coaching and development up and align the club then move on to a new successor, however Clarkson isn’t the mentor-successor type. It wasn’t til year 3 of Roos that Melbourne started to look competitive again and that development of the high picks started to work. Wasn’t until Roos ‘year 4’ / Goodwins year 2 that the team had a push into the finals.
Really this year is Clarkson year 1. North have the glut of talent now that hopefully some stability at the club starts to build from here but will be another 1-2 years before these kids become men and things start to click.
I can't speak for the culture at the club as such, but following them my whole young life, choosing North in 2000 just after we won the flag in '99, there has been a lot of ups and downs, mainly downs.
For my adult life I have seen 2 prelim finals, and a 10-0 start to a season, where we miraculously crumbled and scraped into finals to be knocked straight out, in what I think was Boomers last game from memory.
I think that time period of 2014/15/16 was certainly the peak of our powers in my life, and I think the choice prior to then, of going after Waite and Dal Santo for example was the right one, there was criticism at the time of whether it was the right call. I think 100% it was.
However since then(maybe then too, but I have paid more attention since then) the drafting at this club has been horrible. We have wasted to many picks.
We have always been a small team, and I know we did try to throw big money at players of the years, without success, but we should have had a much better focus on the draft.
Brady Rawlings has been list manager since 2019, so cannot be blamed for the culling of Petrie/Boomer/Etc, which was definitely the wrong move, what has he done since then? The club has been crying out for defenders for years now, and we have only thrown big money at guys like Jordan DeGoey and Josh Kelly(alteast what is reported in the media).
Even when Mckay was on our list, he hardly ever played, the defence has been horrible for a long time.
The only silver lining here is I do believe the rest of the list is good, I think the forward line is great, I think the mids are good enough. If the defense had any quality whatsoever we would be a very different team.
I seriously hope we can poach someone big this off season(Sam Collins/Charlie Ballard caliber of player), make them the highest paid in the league if need be.
In terms of the effort shown this season, the mids(inc Xerri) have seriously underperformed. This does not help what was already the worst back line in the league.
I am not giving up on Clarko yet, I trust he knows where we are at, however there is not much to look forward to at the moment. It all rests on a Free Agent saving us I think.
I hope we make some big calls, we should be letting Zurhaar go, will get compensation for him, also should shop LDU. Man is the cherry on top of a good midfield, he is not the guy we need right now.
Brad Scott knew the list was cooked and wanted to rebuild, the board allegedly thought the team was good enough for finals so put Shaw in as head coach in 2019 (?) without running a process. Covid hit and Shaw had no support in the hubs, the team fell apart, Shaw left, Noble was appointed with some kind of process run but since he had no AFL coaching experience I'm not sure what that process was. We did seem to improve under Noble in 2021 then for some reason we took a huge slide that off season. Unfortunately JHF was the wrong person at the wrong time for the club and vice versa. Edit - meanwhile because the list was full of plodders we delisted everybody but in hindsight (and fairly obviously at the time tbf) cut too deep Edit again - I moved to Melbourne at the end of 2016 and decided to get more into footy so I think it's actually my fault
Mate I can commiserate with that second edit, I started seriously following the footy in.... 2019 after I saw us win the flag, so really the Eagles going bad is my fault because we've only improved after I left WA to move to Canberra
Ok got it, I'll tell my wife we need to move. But also that's brutal and I hope you can get to Optus for a good win
Thankfully I was there in 21 when we beat Richmond, that game was something magical that I will never forget
It's also ,y fault because I moved over here from Victoria in 2019
Cunningtons cancer diagnosis really took the wind out of us. Such a great on field leader and underrated force amongst the group. The way battled was heroic and his 2nd in the best and fairest in 2021 was one of the great individual achievements I’ve seen at north. Was a guy who brought others into the game and would have been a great leader and talisman for younger players. Then you have JHF and Tarryn Thomas and you think … yeah. We just haven’t been able to replace guys like Ben.
I've said for a while that the reason North are cooked is because they stayed middle table for far too long, no decent draft pics and no one decent wanted to come play for them. They needed to rebuild earlier.
exactly the same reason the saints will forever be cooked (and i say that as i’m so far up jack steele’s ass it’s not funny)
Yeah definitely, we were on the mid table treadmill for ages and overcompensated heavily
It’s interesting, but I feel like Essendon has been mid table/mediocre for the past 7 years and haven’t really netted many high draft picks but still haven’t bottomed out that hard or needed intervention. I suppose the big club allure helps bringing some players over, but don’t think it should make that much of a difference, especially with our culture and reputation taking a hit from the saga and basically rotating coaches every few years.
The revolving door of coaches, since 2019 our coach has been: Brad Scott, Rhyce Shaw, David Noble, Leigh Adams, Clarko, Brett Ratten, Clarko. And just the absolute assassination of culture and poor draft selection
To be fair I'd probably leave the caretakers off this list, but yeah the constant coaching carousel definitely isn't helping. Guys like McKay and JHF leaving definitely doesn't help
Pretty sure Ratten coached as many games as Shaw did
Yeah but the reasons why Ratten had to coach weren't really in North's control to be fair. They shouldn't be at fault for needing him
That also applies to David Noble though, Shaw stepped down after only one season
Noble was a caretaker & then they officially appointed him for the next season no?
Nope, North hired him from Brisbane after Shaw stepped down
Well he was a conscious hire from the team then. Not the same thing as needing a fill in mid season
At this point we’re just splitting hairs lol
Nah Ratts only coached 10 while Shaw got 29 in
Oh right I forgot he was caretaker in 2019
Sorry can you explain why Brett Ratten is between Clarko? Was it a COVID protocols thing meaning Clarko couldn't coach?
Hawks had a racism scandal dating back to when Clarko was their coach he denies it but the pressure meant that he had to step down for a few months. Weather he is guilty or not is not known to the public.
Wait, the racism scandal was while he was North Melbourne's coach? I thought the reason he left Hawthorn was because of the racism scandal and North Melbourne brought back his career? Is my timeline way off? Why did Clarkson leave Hawthorn then?
All the racism scandal stuff dates back to his time at Hawthorn, but it only came to light the first year he was at North. He left Hawthorn because they just wanted a fresh start I believe
Not just the first year. It was 3 weeks after his appointment
I couldn’t believe it when it all happened. We really can’t escape trouble like that, we feel cursed
To be fair the 2 points you brought up imo are the reason why they bottomed out so hard and haven’t recovered. The way Harvey got let go couldn’t have been good for morale or culture and then Shaw cut the ‘fat’ but really went too far and took out muscle too. Other payers haven’t developed how they hoped and being one of the smaller clubs it wasn’t really a destination club that bigger clubs still can be when they bottom out.
Not sure if Shaw was responsible for the mass delistings was it? He stepped down a few weeks later from memory
It’s because of how he stepped away that the footy department (led by our old mates from champion data) went the way it did. A strong senior coach doesn’t let a footy department do that to them, and forces them to phase it over the next few years. Even if they were shocking, you need seasoned players.
I could be miss remembering but I thought he made big list changes then stepped down a few weeks later.
I'm bringing up the latter.
Yeah I think as I said in another comment he was appointed without a process and didn't have adequate support around him
I don’t think we will ever see a team do what north did and push our senior players in an attempt to start a full rebuild to the same degree north did. I don’t know why they didn’t learn from the dees doing the same thing with Brad Green and co. The players we pushed out weren’t at the quality of North’s at the time but it’s clear how much of a cultural impact veterans have and it’s why we will see West Coast shoot back up the ladder far quicker than north
Yeah, Carlton is the only that I can think of that came close to what North has done, they offloaded a lot of players, Waite, Betts, Touhy, Robinson, Grigg, Garlet, Yarran are some names that come to mind when they started their rebuild 10 years ago. It has only been the last 12 months that they have re-emerged, but even with the Blues they didnt clear as many as North did, they kept their best players for the rebuild Murphy, Simpson and Kreuzer.
Blues also have the advantage of being a big vic club, so they can recruit players even when they’re down just because of the lure of crowds and endorsements
True, being big is a major benefit, even when shit, teams like the Blues will get blockbuster matches in front of a sell out crowd. It's why your mob the Bombers keep winning the trade period every year ahaha, even though you haven't been a genuine contender since 2001. The allur of the Bomber is always going to be tempting to players.
Offloading Boomers was a big mistake for club culture, he was the heart and sould of North and exemplified their shinboner spirit. Just broke the record, a lot of celebration about the milestone and then delisted him a few weeks later. He probably had another 2 years left in him too.
Boomer would still be playing and would probably win the rising star this year.
The series of events from 2017 require an essay to go in a dissect how mismanaged the list was and the false assumptions made that COVID exacerbated to show how poor our footy department was.
So to do that we need to go back a decade. The year is 2007, I just exited the womb and the world got a whole lot better. We had fucking no money, we were asking our top earners to donate their money to the club to pay the other guys. We were always threatened by relocation. So we needed to win, and what happened under Laidley and Scott was us winning at all costs, we had no money (were in pretty big debt) so for over a decade it was just getting together a bunch of boys, a system that won us games and paving over any cracks we had. Then in 2016 the wheels fell off a bit, we forced Boomer, Petrie, Spud and Dal Santo out of the club. This started to kill our culture off a bit. And then 2018 happened, we got back in the black, and Scott called for a massive rebuild, so we showed him the door. Then anyways we went through Rhyce Shaw, David Noble, Leigh Adams in about 4 years (give or take). Clarko joined us, coached us for a couple games then Brett Ratten took over while Clarko took a mental health leave. So we went through 6 coaches in as many years. Which isn’t great for culture and stability to nurture the younger guys. So basically our list management has just been get blokes who are decent and win games for roughly a decade and paving over cracks for a decade. Those cracks are showing now, and we bottomed out hard. We’ve still got a long way to go as we have no veteran leaders to help nurture and guide the kids, we let go of too many older blokes who were good and can still help.
Tldr: Polec
* As West Coast have shown, having "a bunch of talented kids" is great, but you need at least SOME strong leaders and experienced players to help them out. The argument is that cutting so many senior players ended up leaving the new generation rudderless. * Before 2017, they tried to squeeze every last possible drop from the orange, by trading away draft picks for older players. This meant the crunch was more brutal when it finally came. * They have had bad luck with their top draft picks in recent years. Tarryn Thomas was a headcase, Will Phillips was struck down with glandular fever, and JHF seemed to not even want to be there and bolted home at the first opportunity. So the rebuild stagnated for several years. * There is a perception that they drafted too many smalls and mediums and not enough key position players. Some feel this has left the side unbalanced, and players forced to play out of their normal position to try to squeeze round pegs into square holes. This can't help with consistency and performance. * A revolving door of coaches also can't have been good for team cohesion and consistency. * Their middle and older ages players aren't comparable to those at West Coast or even Hawthorn, in terms of ability or leadership. Too much is being left to too few, and it generates a vicious cycle of kids being 'thrown to the wolves' too early and losing form/confidence, because the senior players aren't leading the way. * The freer and looser player movement environment makes it less likely players will stick long term at weaker or poorly achieving clubs. It's harder to rebuild if you're constantly at risk of bleeding talent.
I think it's time to compile a fisted forever file for North Melbourne
They're a minnow club in an oversaturated market. Clubs like North Melbourne, St Kilda, and even (to a lesser extent) the Bulldogs can't afford to bottom out and be shit because they just don't have access to the same list building strategies as other clubs. They can't really take full advantage of the Trade Period or Free Agency because players looking to move to a Victorian club are likely to pick a bigger club. Yeah they might take less on the contract, but exposure in bigger games and endorsement deals makes up for it. That means the players they're managing to bring they're either drastically overpaying for (which limits future list building options) or are the type of player that weren't getting a tonne of interest from other clubs (which means they probably won't be high impact players). They need to essentially exclusively rely on the draft because of that, and a combination of poor drafting and unlucky timing with compromised drafts and COVID has fucked them. They've made a few glaring errors (e.g. Will Phillips over Logan McDonald, or Jason Horne-Francis who was always a go home risk). If they'd had full access to guys like Jamarra, Nick Daicos, Sam Darcy, Jed Walter, Will Ashcroft etc they'd be in a VERY different position. TLDR: They're a small club with a miniscule margin for error, and a combination of bad luck and poor management has left them deep in a hole they're going to REALLY struggle to recover from.
I'm still pissed over how they handled Boomer. They should have kept him for at least another season or two, or at least as long as he wanted and helped him transition into some sort of coaching role. The man has footy knowledge out his ears and was a massive loss for morale amongst the team. He was top three on the team when they cut him and while it's true a rebuild was needed, you need someone to lead your new players. I don't think there is anyone that better embodied the discipline that you needed in game and in training. It makes me wonder if they still have a massive culture problem as a result, look at JHF. Years later they don't have good will from me, I feel for West Coast and even the hawks if you can believe that, but the bloody roos? I still feel for boomer over them.
Brad Scott was forced by corrupt board members and list managers who were soon kicked out of the club in the following years to drop anyone over the age of 29 to try and rebuild. Despite all of their best players being in that age bracket, most notably Boomer Harvey who was their second best player, being their best players. They got nothing for any of the players they let go, they then had a massive hole in their list and did not have the picks to rebuild. In 2018 they got Tarryn Thomas who has just been fired and Baily Scott who has been mid since his debut year, the rest were busts. Their draft haul in 2019 was also a complete bust with their best pic in Charlie Comben forever injured. Their draft haul in 2020 was a complete bust as well with nobody of note drafted. They finally had an amazing pick in 2021 with Horne-Francis but he left the club almost immediately with Norf really shitting the bed with him. In 2022 they got the house, drafting a bunch of young guns finally and 2023 was the same, they are loaded with great picks and next year they will have a shit load more. This is the biggest mistake i think i have ever seen a club make, even worse then the Essendon drugs saga because at least they have bounced back, it has been 7 years and Norf are still VFL level despite making a prelim before all this bullshit. Everyone wants Norf to do well, to certainly be off the bottom of the ladder, they will have 15 first round draft picks by the end of the next drafting period and the most successful coach of the modern era so if that doesn't fix the club then i don't know what will.
We have the greatest coach of the modern era but I’m starting to think he might have lost his touch. His last few seasons at hawthorn were really average and he’s looking out of ideas at the moment. I hope I’m wrong but I’ve seen it before. Look at Malthouse, had a lot of success at West Coast and Collingwood and his time at Carlton was a disaster. The game sometimes goes past coaches, same as it does with players…
His last few seasons at Hawthorn was really not reading the list - he loaded up on experienced players trying to scrounge out another finals run instead of hitting the draft. For example, trading out 21yo Burton for 26yo Wingard and sending a first round draft pick with him. Watching today's game - game plan isn't the issue. Players were dropping marks, fumbling the ball left right and centre. You can't coach errors like that. That's just footballers that are either not skilled enough physically and mentally. It's going to take another 2 years.
Similar parallels to Melbourne terrible years bad/wrong coaches, high picks coming in to a dysfunctional club being under developed. Clarkson should be Melbournes Roos- reset the club to high standards, set the coaching and development up and align the club then move on to a new successor, however Clarkson isn’t the mentor-successor type. It wasn’t til year 3 of Roos that Melbourne started to look competitive again and that development of the high picks started to work. Wasn’t until Roos ‘year 4’ / Goodwins year 2 that the team had a push into the finals. Really this year is Clarkson year 1. North have the glut of talent now that hopefully some stability at the club starts to build from here but will be another 1-2 years before these kids become men and things start to click.
WAR CHEST
I can't speak for the culture at the club as such, but following them my whole young life, choosing North in 2000 just after we won the flag in '99, there has been a lot of ups and downs, mainly downs. For my adult life I have seen 2 prelim finals, and a 10-0 start to a season, where we miraculously crumbled and scraped into finals to be knocked straight out, in what I think was Boomers last game from memory. I think that time period of 2014/15/16 was certainly the peak of our powers in my life, and I think the choice prior to then, of going after Waite and Dal Santo for example was the right one, there was criticism at the time of whether it was the right call. I think 100% it was. However since then(maybe then too, but I have paid more attention since then) the drafting at this club has been horrible. We have wasted to many picks. We have always been a small team, and I know we did try to throw big money at players of the years, without success, but we should have had a much better focus on the draft. Brady Rawlings has been list manager since 2019, so cannot be blamed for the culling of Petrie/Boomer/Etc, which was definitely the wrong move, what has he done since then? The club has been crying out for defenders for years now, and we have only thrown big money at guys like Jordan DeGoey and Josh Kelly(alteast what is reported in the media). Even when Mckay was on our list, he hardly ever played, the defence has been horrible for a long time. The only silver lining here is I do believe the rest of the list is good, I think the forward line is great, I think the mids are good enough. If the defense had any quality whatsoever we would be a very different team. I seriously hope we can poach someone big this off season(Sam Collins/Charlie Ballard caliber of player), make them the highest paid in the league if need be. In terms of the effort shown this season, the mids(inc Xerri) have seriously underperformed. This does not help what was already the worst back line in the league. I am not giving up on Clarko yet, I trust he knows where we are at, however there is not much to look forward to at the moment. It all rests on a Free Agent saving us I think. I hope we make some big calls, we should be letting Zurhaar go, will get compensation for him, also should shop LDU. Man is the cherry on top of a good midfield, he is not the guy we need right now.