North Melbourne

[Go_Dogs]

Doesnt he earn 1.4 mill /year?

So about 2/3 of his fortnightly take home? Whack!

[FrediKanoute]

Guess the club pays it and other than costing them $20k there is no real penalty.

Surely its a fringe benefit/payment in kind, so I woudl expect that Clarko still pays tax on it. Fines are not tax deductable either!

[bornadog]

Jon Ralph writes

Tarryn Thomas will return to football as an AFL-listed player in 2025 – assuming he is able to prove to the league he has satisfactorily completed a behavioural change program.

and

The next steps for Tarryn Thomas, who is set to train with a state league club in coming weeks and is intent on playing next year. The big hurdle is getting AFL approval which is a real challenge given his adherence to previous behavioural programs

[comrade]

No doubt some coastal life$tyle will cure all.

[jeemak]

No doubt some coastal life$tyle will cure all.

I can't wait for the redemption story and the media fanfare once he's established as a coastal resident with property holdings.

[Sedat]

No doubt some coastal life$tyle will cure all.

Anybody in the media who had Finlayson hung, drawn and quartered for what he said a couple of weeks ago, and in the same breath are barracking hard for the Tarryn Thomas redemption arc/road to glory, are disgusting human beings. No doubt it will be the same media scum who stayed silent like cowards while Thomas was terrorizing a number of different women over a few years in his private life.

[Bulldog Joe]

Anybody in the media who had Finlayson hung, drawn and quartered for what he said a couple of weeks ago, and in the same breath are barracking hard for the Tarryn Thomas redemption arc/road to glory, are disgusting human beings. No doubt it will be the same media scum who stayed silent like cowards while Thomas was terrorizing a number of different women over a few years in his private life.

We live in a world where there is always someone ready to be offended by anything and everything.

However, really malevolent intent is not considered as seriously as saying something out of place, but the media love a redemption story regardless.

[Sedat]

We live in a world where there is always someone ready to be offended by anything and everything.

However, really malevolent intent is not considered as seriously as saying something out of place, but the media love a redemption story regardless.

Words uttered can and should be criticised heavily when they are as distasteful as what Finlayson said (racist/religious language obviously as well). But they should always be in proportion to sustained patterns of actual violence and threatening behaviour towards multiple women - media grubs who shout from the rooftops for the former but then ignore the latter for years are quite simply shit people and total cowards. We all know who they are.

[EasternWest]

I can't wait for the redemption story and the media fanfare once he's established as a coastal resident with property holdings.

A one on one no holds barred interview with Tom Morris?

[bulldogtragic]

A one on one no holds barred interview with Tom Morris?

They can do a whole segment of ‘marry, **** and kill’….

[angelopetraglia]

The never-ending tunnel: Inside the demise of North Melbourne

In 2016 after a finals loss, North Melbourne cut four veteran stars including Brent Harvey. Since then it’s been a never-ending tunnel for North fans but will they ever see the light at the end?

North Melbourne coach Brad Scott sacked club legend Brent “Boomer” Harvey in his Arden St office.

The heartbreaking decision to delist Harvey along with Drew Petrie, Michael Firrito and Nick Dal Santo on the eve of the 2016 finals series had secretly been made at board level.

The Kangaroos started the season 9-0 after reaching preliminary finals in the two previous seasons.

But it was fool’s gold. Club powerbrokers sensed the cliff was coming. North won just three of their remaining 12 home-and-away clashes in 2016 before bowing out in an elimination final with the oldest list in the AFL.

“This call is about the next five years,” then-chairman James Brayshaw said at the time.

“You’ve got to have a strategic plan in footy. You can’t just make it up as you go along.”

Brayshaw’s reign finished at the end of 2016 and supporters could be forgiven for thinking they have been making it up as they go for most of the eight years since.

On Saturday their recent record slumped to one win from the club’s past 28 matches with a 57-point thumping at the hands of Adelaide.

They have won just four out of 28 quarters this season – the first half against Fremantle and two junk-time terms against the Brisbane and Adelaide totalling four points.

After six rounds the Roos had collectively polled 18 votes in the AFL Coaches’ Association award – five each for Luke Davies-Uniacke, Tom Powell and Tristan Xerri and three to Harry Sheezel.

Isaac Heeney has polled 47 and 22 players have individually received more than North Melbourne.

President Sonja Hood’s stated Key Performance Indicator for her football department this year was how fans felt coming to games, rather than how many games they won.

Seven rounds in and many feel bleak. Tortured supporters want to know how on earth did it come to this?

And will they ever see light at the end of what seems to be a never ever-ending tunnel?

THE FLASHPPOINT

The Kangaroos lost control of the decision to sack their legends when Scott spilled the beans to Harvey.

Word spread throughout the locker room before club heavyweights had agreed on a strategy.

Harvey finished on 432 mighty matches – the most played in VFL-AFL history.

But was the 38-year-old really finished? Harvey’s 2016 numbers almost mirrored 2016 All-Australian half-forward Toby Greene.

Petrie played on at West Coast and Collingwood considered throwing lifelines to Harvey and Dal Santo.

“I’m not ashamed to say I love these guys and if they were here in 2017, I’d play them,” Scott said at the time.

“But that would not be in our best interests.”

The brutality cut at the fabric of the club. Was it the right call? It is hard to make that case given the decisions that followed.

THE TOP-UP TWIST

Rohan Connolly suggested in The Age that replacements for Harvey, Petrie, Dal Santo and Firrito could come from within.

Connolly named Ed Vickers-Willis, Dan Nielson and Mitch Hibberd for Firrito, Taylor Garner, Kayne Turner and Corney Wagner for Harvey, Declan Mountford and Will Fordham for Dal Santo and Majak Daw and Mason Wood for Petrie.

The Kangaroos went from the oldest and most experienced list in 2016 to the second youngest list in 2017.

But the sudden shift to a youth focus on youth barely lasted a month. Following the 2016 season the Kangaroos traded for Paul Ahern, Nathan Hrovat and Marley Williams.

In 2017-18 they added Alex Morgan, Bill Hartung, Jared Polec, Jasper Pittard, Dom Tyson and Aaron Hall.

Scott and his loyal football boss Cameron Joyce – who were in charge for all of those decisions – were gone midway through 2019.

Internally it was not a shock. Assistant Jason Lappin was delegated a large chunk of pre-season in what was the first sign to some that Scott’s 10th season would be his last.

Josh Walker and Aiden Bonar were brought in at the end of 2019 and the Roos did not enter that draft until pick 31. They pushed their top-10 pick – which ended up being used by Fremantle on Caleb Serong – into the 2020 Covid-affected pool.

The price paid for Polec and Pittard in 2018 was pick 11.

Players available at that selection included Bobby Hill, James Rowbottom, Jordan Clark, Xavier Duursma, Xavier O’Halloran, Tom Sparrow, James Jordon and Justin McInerney.

The other additions came at little cost in a trade sense. But they clogged the list as other clubs unearthed diamonds in the rough including Liam Baker, Brody Mihocek, Joel Amartey, Lachie Schultz, Toby Bedford, Callum Wilkie, Tom Atkins, Kade Chandler.

All of those players arrived as rookies or towards the back of the draft.

With Harvey, Firrito, Dal Santo and Petrie out the door, was it really going to be Ahern, Hrovat, Williams, Hartung, Polec, Pittard, Tyson and Hall who propelled this club to its fifth premiership?

The list pivot was aimed at putting talent around Jack Ziebell, Ben Cunnington, Todd Goldstein, Shaun Higgins and Robbie Tarrant, who were in their prime.

In fairness, they almost pulled off the greatest coup of all time by signing Dustin Martin in 2017.

They also gave Andrew Gaff and Josh Kelly plenty to think about.

But the refresh failed and by 2020 the Roos were a mess.

THE GIANT CULL

North Melbourne finished 17th in 2020 with the sixth-oldest list.

They had the most players aged 26-29 – the prime years – yet were nowhere near competitive.

So they sacked 11 players before any of the other 17 clubs had finished their seasons.

Sam Durdin and Tom Murphy were delisted 14 hours after they pulled on the jumper.

“I was getting messages from blokes saying, ‘I’m done, I’m done, I’m done’,” Durdin has said.

“I went into my exit meeting after nine blokes had already been delisted thinking, ‘I might be right here’.

“But I was number 10. My meeting was at 11 or 11.30am, and I walked straight out and grabbed a beer and tried to drown my sorrows.”

The most contentious call was to trade Ben Brown.

The fan favourite was 27 and had kicked more than 60 goals in 2017-19.

But the Roos believed clubs had figured him out and were worried his knees wouldn’t last.

When Brown’s camp asked for a four-year deal with a 2024 salary of around $800,000 he was put up for trade and offloaded to Melbourne, where he won a premiership the following season.

The exodus swelled to 14 players and ensured the Roos fielded the second-youngest list in 2021.

THE BEN AMARFIO ERA

Former chairman Ben Buckley appointed ex-Cricket Australia powerbroker Ben Amarfio as club boss late in 2019.

After spending the summer getting to know staff members over a coffee he called a club meeting in the auditorium.

The message was effectively: “You’re all great people … but we are s***.”

Amarfio pointed to the Kangas finishing 12th on the ladder and ranking last for membership in Victoria among several other metrics.

The spray might have been valid. But internally the club’s culture suffered and turnover of staff became extreme.

Amarfio’s fans say he was a great commercial boss. But the football department had struggles with him.
Amarfio requested training plans and sometimes submitted his own reports on what he thought was going wrong.

The 2020 Covid hub hurt North Melbourne more than most. Some of those wounds have not fully healed.

Club great Brady Rawlings was brought back as football boss for 2020, around the same time veteran recruiter Scott Clayton joined.

Rawlings has since been demoted, Clayton been promoted and the doom cycle continued.

Player agents claim they became confused by North’s list management set up. Were the Roos interested in their players or not? They said the answer sometimes differed depending on who they asked.

By and large North Melbourne had become an unhappy place.

Coach Rhyce Shaw took mental health leave after 29 games and never returned.

The Roos replaced Shaw with David Noble, who Amarfio and president Sonja Hood then sacked after 38 matches in charge.

Amarfio resigned shortly after Hood convinced four-time premiership coach Alastair Clarkson to return home as the messiah for season 2023.

GROUND ZERO

In 2021 North Melbourne claimed its first wooden spoon in 49 years. The club met Jason Horne-Francis once that year.

They kept waiting for borders to open up, but Covid curtailed their plans to get into South Australia.

So they bit the bullet and interviewed him over Zoom.

Clayton told a members forum the powerful midfielder was “as good as any No. 1 I can remember” and likened his attributes to Michael Voss, Patrick Dangerfield and Dustin Martin.

“The thing that stands out more than all of that though is he’s a great teammate,” Clayton said.

“That appeals to us more than anything. The other thing that just keeps coming through loud and clear is how loyal he is.”

But Horne-Francis requested a trade to Port Adelaide after one season.

Some at the Roos were concerned he was a flight risk in pre-season. Harvey told Horne-Francis to get around his teammates – who were high-fiving each other – instead of sitting on a bench by himself after his first training session.

Horne-Francis would admit he was no angel that year. Then again, what environment did the Roos welcome him into?

He enjoyed just two wins, endured a coach sacking and suspected his knees had been medically misdiagnosed, with Port opting to operate soon after the trade was finalised.

Compare that introduction to Luke McDonald, who played in a preliminary final in his first season.

McDonald was drafted into a locker room featuring Daniel Wells, Andrew Swallow, Lindsay Thomas, Scott Thompson as well as those four superstars who were spiked in 2016.

Horne-Francis now has Travis Boak, Connor Rozee and Zak Butters to learn from at Alberton and has started to shine brightly.

In 2021 the Roos got their players to line up in order of how many games they had played.

“It was amazing to see how many people we have who haven’t even played 50 games yet,” McDonald has said.

You wonder who is teaching habits and how to set up each week to gun draftees like Harry Sheezel, George Wardlaw, Zane Duursma and Colby McKercher?

The only players in Clarkson’s team that have blown out 26 birthday candles are Aidan Corr, Darcy Tucker and McDonald.

[angelopetraglia]

DESTINATION ELSEWHERE

Ben McKay privately quipped that he was going to break the intercept mark record in a game against Fremantle in 2022.

The fullback was tracking well. He had eight marks – three contested – in round 8 before injuring his knee.

Some weeks he would play back-shoulder on Tom Lynch or Tom Hawkins and beat them.

But other weeks it seemed a lesserlight forward would kick multiple goals on him in a quarter.

That’s why some at Arden St feel frustrated by McKay’s strong start at Essendon.

It looks like his concentration and competitiveness have improved.

Similarly, Corr manned Lynch in the 2019 grand final

But he does not look like the same player he was at Greater Western Sydney.

Corr is ultra-competitive and the losing culture would sting him.

But eyebrows were raised when recruit Zac Fisher swapped jumpers with Patrick Cripps after Good Friday.

In masterstroke moves the Roos signed Jarrad Waite and Shaun Higgins as free agents in 2014.

Since then, they have added 95 players since and not one of them has been a big fish.

The only honours shared by that cohort belonged to Larkey (All-Australian) and Sheezel (Rising Star) last season.

Rawlings has one of the hardest jobs in his current role as head of talent.

How can a minnow club languishing at the bottom of the ladder compete with premiership powerhouses in the marketplace?

Every club has a chequebook and so players pursuing success look elsewhere.

North has not even been able to offer players a carpark at Arden St. That might sound trivial, but is no laughing matter.

The story goes that one retired goalkicker allegedly accrued dozens of parking fines that went unpaid.

So Rawlings has no choice but settle for unheralded names, and still has to pay overs for a signature.

Fisher was relegated to substitute against Adelaide on Saturday — seven games into his juicy long-term contract.

Dylan Stephens also arrived last off-season on a four-year deal.

Critics of the wingman say Stephens fumbles and was not in the Swans’ long-term plans.

Do some Roos recruits rest on their laurels because they are earning cash that they arguably do not deserve?
There is sympathy for Rawlings and those blaming him for not scouting a replacement for McKay or Griffin Logue (injured) at fullback have done so unfairly.

The Roos trained up Charlie Comben as a defender, signed Bigoa Nyuon from Richmond, Toby Pink from the SANFL and drafted Will Dawson at No. 22.

They had nibbles at it. Realistically what else can they do?

Simpkin, Larkey, Xerri, (contracted until 2029) and Sheezel (2030) are locked in long term.

“My nightmare would be to be at the club for all the tough times, take off and all of a sudden we get good,” Larkey has said.

“Anyone can run to a top team and try to win a flag. But does that flag mean as much as the one where you’ve done the hard work and put in the hours?”

But Rawlings is fighting tooth and nail to fend off poachers.

McKay left as a free agent last year, Cameron Zurhaar is a free agent this year and Davies-Uniacke will be next year.

They sacked Tarryn Thomas this year when he had trade currency in October.

Strictly from a footballing sense it was a hammerblow. Thomas placed sixth in last year’s best-and-fairest – won by Sheezel – from 12 games.

If votes were tallied on a pro-rata basis, Thomas would have won the Syd Barker Medal ahead of Davies-Uniacke.

DEVELOPMENT AND COACHING

Gavin Brown was a much-loved figure at the Kangas.

He was in charge of player development for 10 years and helped transform McKay from a failed forward into a super stopper.

But was 10 years too long in that role? Brown and John Blakey “mutually parted ways” with the Roos last year.

They also lost gun midfield coach Jordan Russell, who some say was Noble’s whipping boy.

Co-captain Jy Simpkin praised Russell as the best assistant he has had on the eve of the season.

“I was lucky enough to win two best-and-fairests and he no doubt helped me with a lot of that,” Simpkin said.

“I’ve had a couple different line coaches and the reason why I loved ‘Russ’ so much was because after games and on weekends if he could tell I was flat or wasn’t my normal self, he would always reach out to make sure I was doing OK.”

Russell chose to reunite with Carlton senior assistant Ash Hansen – who he worked with at the Bulldogs – and is in charge of the Blues’ firing forward line this year.

MENTAL SCARRING

North is in the midst of the worst five-year stretch the game has seen in generations.

The Kangaroos have won 12 out of 91 games since the start of 2020.

Their strike-rate of 13.2 per cent is poorer than St Kilda in 1982-1986, an era which netted the Saints four consecutive wooden spoons.

The Roos are $7 with TAB not to win a game this season and tracking towards their third spoon in four years.

Their leaders were asked in 2021 if development should be prioritised over winning.

“Hopefully everyone can understand the path we’re on,” Ziebell said.

“But to be shorter on my answer with am I happy with where the club is? I don’t like losing, and I don’t like sitting on the bottom of the ladder.”

McDonald declared: “I want to win. We’re all here to win”.

Poor old Bailey Scott has sung the song nine times from 85 games (11 per cent).

No one to have played 50 VFL-AFL games has tasted less success than Scott in the past 90 years.

Teammate Tom Powell (12.5 per cent) isn’t far behind. He holds the third-worst win-loss record since 1934.

When Paul Roos took over the basket case that Melbourne was a decade ago he wondered whether the scars would ever fade.

“If you can’t handball five metres to a teammate it’s impossible to move the ball,” Roos roared after losing a game that was hard to watch.

“There’s clearly some that might not be able to get over what’s happened here in the past.

“We’re a team that’s waiting to get beaten. That lack of belief that we can win or we’re capable of winning is far, far greater than what I imagined it could possibly be.”

Clarkson’s comments after last week’s loss to Hawthorn sounded similar.

“When you’ve been whacked around the ears a bit for four or five years it’s easy for them to fall into a, ‘Woe is me, here we go again’ type of thing,” Clarkson said.

THE DIAMOND MIDFIELD

The Roos started building a generational midfield with golden draft choices in 2016.

In order, they selected Jy Simpkin, Davies-Uniacke, Thomas, Will Phillips, Powell, Horne-Francis, Sheezel, Wardlaw and McKercher in the first round.

Thomas and Horne-Francis are gone, but there is still a truckload of talent at Clarkson’s disposal.

Last week McKercher took four bounces and then hit Paul Curtis on the chest. Clarkson wondered if he looked like the next Zach Merrett.

Sheezel and Wardlaw speak for themselves and Powell packs a defensive punch.

The problem is that all of that talent is rolled up in midfielders and, in Duursma’s case, a medium forward.

In 2015 Carlton drafted Jacob Weitering, Harry McKay and Charlie Curnow. It’s spine was built in 15 minutes on one draft night.

The Roos are likely to have the No. 1 pick again in a draft topped by on-ballers Josh Smillie, Sid Draper and Finn O’Sullivan.

If they take the best talent they won’t be addressing their needs.

So should Rawlings split their first pick to try and grab the best of the talls without reaching, as well as adding one more premium midfielder?

Then again, any big boy drafted this year would probably require several years before he was ready to make an impact.

The Demons walked a similar draft path when they were coached by Roos.

They secured Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Angus Brayshaw with top-five picks, waited until they finally became competitive and then picked off defensive pillars Jake Lever and Steven May.

If the Kangas are patient enough perhaps when they re-emerge ready-made players could be purchased to fill the holes in their spine.

THE RIGHT PATH, BUT FOR HOW LONG?

For all of the negativity, there would not be many people in football who doubt the path the Roos are finally on.

They are committed to the journey under Clarkson, who has pointed to precedents where clubs have bounced quickly.

“This club was on the bottom in 1972 and won the flag in 1975,” Clarkson has said.

In the same breath Clarkson referenced his old club, Hawthorn, winning silverware in 1961 and the spoon in 1965, as well as Collingwood’s climb from 17th in 2021 to a premiership in 2023.

But a glimpse at the current draft order suggests it is going to be damn hard to make ground fast.

Most would agree Gold Coast is light years in front of the Roos’ rebuild.

While North Melbourne currently has pick No. 1 this year, Gold Coast is sitting on No. 8, No. 11 and No. 20.

Fremantle has No. 6, No. 12, and No. 16. Even Sydney – one of the premiership favourites – is, unlike North, sitting multiple top-20 picks.

The path they are on is the right one. But the terrain is tough. As chief footballer Mark Robinson wrote on Saturday: “Clarkson is trudging up Mt Everest in bare feet and can’t even see the summit”.

DESTINATION ELSEWHERE

Ben McKay privately quipped that he was going to break the intercept mark record in a game against Fremantle in 2022.

The fullback was tracking well. He had eight marks – three contested – in round 8 before injuring his knee.

Some weeks he would play back-shoulder on Tom Lynch or Tom Hawkins and beat them.

But other weeks it seemed a lesserlight forward would kick multiple goals on him in a quarter.

That’s why some at Arden St feel frustrated by McKay’s strong start at Essendon.

It looks like his concentration and competitiveness have improved.

Similarly, Corr manned Lynch in the 2019 grand final

But he does not look like the same player he was at Greater Western Sydney.

Corr is ultra-competitive and the losing culture would sting him.

But eyebrows were raised when recruit Zac Fisher swapped jumpers with Patrick Cripps after Good Friday.

In masterstroke moves the Roos signed Jarrad Waite and Shaun Higgins as free agents in 2014.

Since then, they have added 95 players since and not one of them has been a big fish.

The only honours shared by that cohort belonged to Larkey (All-Australian) and Sheezel (Rising Star) last season.

Rawlings has one of the hardest jobs in his current role as head of talent.

How can a minnow club languishing at the bottom of the ladder compete with premiership powerhouses in the marketplace?

Every club has a chequebook and so players pursuing success look elsewhere.

North has not even been able to offer players a carpark at Arden St. That might sound trivial, but is no laughing matter.

The story goes that one retired goalkicker allegedly accrued dozens of parking fines that went unpaid.

So Rawlings has no choice but settle for unheralded names, and still has to pay overs for a signature.

Fisher was relegated to substitute against Adelaide on Saturday — seven games into his juicy long-term contract.

Dylan Stephens also arrived last off-season on a four-year deal.

Critics of the wingman say Stephens fumbles and was not in the Swans’ long-term plans.

Do some Roos recruits rest on their laurels because they are earning cash that they arguably do not deserve?
There is sympathy for Rawlings and those blaming him for not scouting a replacement for McKay or Griffin Logue (injured) at fullback have done so unfairly.

The Roos trained up Charlie Comben as a defender, signed Bigoa Nyuon from Richmond, Toby Pink from the SANFL and drafted Will Dawson at No. 22.

They had nibbles at it. Realistically what else can they do?

Simpkin, Larkey, Xerri, (contracted until 2029) and Sheezel (2030) are locked in long term.

“My nightmare would be to be at the club for all the tough times, take off and all of a sudden we get good,” Larkey has said.

“Anyone can run to a top team and try to win a flag. But does that flag mean as much as the one where you’ve done the hard work and put in the hours?”

But Rawlings is fighting tooth and nail to fend off poachers.

McKay left as a free agent last year, Cameron Zurhaar is a free agent this year and Davies-Uniacke will be next year.

They sacked Tarryn Thomas this year when he had trade currency in October.

Strictly from a footballing sense it was a hammerblow. Thomas placed sixth in last year’s best-and-fairest – won by Sheezel – from 12 games.

If votes were tallied on a pro-rata basis, Thomas would have won the Syd Barker Medal ahead of Davies-Uniacke.

DEVELOPMENT AND COACHING

Gavin Brown was a much-loved figure at the Kangas.

He was in charge of player development for 10 years and helped transform McKay from a failed forward into a super stopper.

But was 10 years too long in that role? Brown and John Blakey “mutually parted ways” with the Roos last year.

They also lost gun midfield coach Jordan Russell, who some say was Noble’s whipping boy.

Co-captain Jy Simpkin praised Russell as the best assistant he has had on the eve of the season.

“I was lucky enough to win two best-and-fairests and he no doubt helped me with a lot of that,” Simpkin said.

“I’ve had a couple different line coaches and the reason why I loved ‘Russ’ so much was because after games and on weekends if he could tell I was flat or wasn’t my normal self, he would always reach out to make sure I was doing OK.”

Russell chose to reunite with Carlton senior assistant Ash Hansen – who he worked with at the Bulldogs – and is in charge of the Blues’ firing forward line this year.

[angelopetraglia]

Interesting read on NMFC. How not to rebuild. So many lessons in that and I hop the leaders of our footy club read it and study it.

[bulldogtragic]

Interesting read on NMFC. How not to rebuild. So many lessons in that and I hop the leaders of our footy club read it and study it.

The same people at the club who have seen Lobb’s value plummet and thought it was a good idea to bring Harmes in?

We nail our first rounders. We out draft North and I think there’s no parallel.

[Go_Dogs]

Good read AP, thanks for sharing.