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Not far short of 10pm last night, the North Melbourne Football Club released a rather casual, oddly-timed statement confirming that 25-year-old Jack Ziebell would in 2017 become the next captain of the club.
The shift to a new captain has been in the offing ever since Andrew Swallow announced at this year’s best-and-fairest that he was stepping down from the role, but Ziebell has been hailed as his successor for much longer than that.
From when he first walked through the doors at Arden St after being drafted at pick No.9 in the 2008 AFL draft, it’s hard to remember a time when Ziebell wasn’t talked about as a future North Melbourne captain.
I mean this is a bloke for whom North fans have had an only-halfway-joking campaign to build a 100ft tall statue for several years now.
We got an early taste of what a Ziebell captaincy could be like when he stood in for Andrew Swallow in the club’s Round 13 Friday night match against Hawthorn this year.
As a North fan I can comfortably say that despite the fact the Roos lost the match by nine points (kicking 11 goals, 18 behinds – six scoring shots more than the Hawks), it was the best football the team played all season.
On that night North Melbourne played with a ferocity and physicality that only the best teams can. Ziebell set the tone early, bowling over Sam Mitchell in a moment of Ali-versus-Liston-like iconicity (well, in the eyes of us North fans at least).
The final result on the night was pretty disappointing. But wayward kicking in front of goal aside, I thought to myself on that Friday night that if this was the brand of football North Melbourne would play under Ziebell’s captaincy, he should be given the job permanently on Saturday morning.
Of course, a new captain is the not the only change that is happening at North Melbourne ahead of the 2017 AFL season.
In 2017, the Roos will have a new chairman, a new football manager, a new list manager, a new recruiting manager, a new logo, and eleven new players – about a quarter of the list, all up.
It’ll be the first year since 1995 that a little champ named Brent Harvey hasn’t been on the playing list (though he will be at the club, mentoring the kids), and storied North Melbourne names Drew Petrie, Daniel Wells and Michael Firrito will also be absent – and we’ll all miss Nicky Dal too, of course.
In the space of a season North will have dropped from being the second oldest list in the league to being the second youngest, with sixteen untried players among the squad – two more than any other team in the league.
While those numbers paint a picture of a young, raw list, it’s a list that has 13 players with at least 100 games experience (equal third in the league) and 139 finals played (seventh in the league) – so not all hope of a somewhat competitive season is lost.
Regardless, this is a textbook example of a club looking to go into a rebuild. Those who’ve read my thoughts regularly during the season past might remember that I’m not a big fan of those (like here and here).
Despite that, I’m excited for it. And okay, maybe that’s because literally all it takes is about two seconds of royal blue and white promo footage to make me reach for my wallet and starting forking over my hard-earned in exchange for 2017 membership, Philip J Fry style. But I’m excited all the same.
When North Melbourne began its last building period, when Brad Scott first joined the club, it was a mess – it had only recently avoided being relocated to the Gold Coast, the facilities were out of date, and the money to pay players the wages they deserved just wasn’t there.
In the years since though it has built itself into a modern organisation that is ready compete with the best. Ziebell’s captaincy wasn’t the only announcement yesterday – the club also announced a financial profit for the eighth time in nine years, and yet more reduction to a debt that once seemed insurmountable.
Football is an unpredictable game, and the difference between eras of success and eras of mediocrity or worse can often be measured in margins with the width of a hair.
Who knows if this new era will deliver the premiership success that North fans have craved since the new millenium began?
All I can say is that we have what feels like a more secure launching pad than ever, so let’s cross our fingers and hope.