North Melbourne cut a gargantuan amount of experience at the end of 2016 and then followed it up with cutting some more this off-season.

Andrew Swallow, Lindsay Thomas, Sam Gibson, Lachie Hansen and Aaron Mullett represent another significant crop of experience that has left the building.

‘Rebuild’ tends to be a dirty word in the AFL but there’s no other way to describe what’s happening to North Melbourne’s playing list right now.

Plenty are willing to prophesy doom and gloom for the Roos. They’re saying wooden spoons, they’re saying ten years without finals.

Nah. Pay no heed to false prophets. Here’s how North Melbourne becomes a force on the rise again in just two short years.

2018

The 2018 draft has the potential to be a big one for North Melbourne, as they have at least some level of access to a talented crop of potential academy and father-son draftees.

The Kangaroos look like they will be the first club to benefit in a big way from the AFL’s Next Generation Academy program.

These work in essentially the same way the NSW and Queensland academies do, except they are limited only to players of indigenous or multicultural heritage.

North’s zones includes a few specks of Victoria but crucially for this case the whole of Tasmania.

As a result they’ve got exclusive access in 2018 to draft Tarryn Thomas, an indigenous player from Launceston who has been on the radar since mid-2016.

“If I had to describe him he has the attributes of a Shaun Burgoyne, where Burgoyne can start down back, go through midfield and then go forward,” says Thomas’ coach. Yes please.

The waters are a bit muddier though when it comes to father-son picks as due to an unlikely combination of circumstances, North has two potential father-son draftees this year… but both of them have a choice of three clubs.

Nick Blakey is a 194cm player who is at this early point seen as one of the more promising prospects in the draft, able to play a key position or possibly become a tall midfielder.

He is the son of John Blakey, who played 135 games for Fitzroy (making him also eligible to join Brisbane) and 224 games for North Melbourne, being part of both the ’96 and ’99 premiership sides.

However in addition to Brisbane and North Melbourne, Nick also has the option of choosing to join the Sydney Swans, as John is an assistant coach there and the family has lived in Sydney long enough for him to qualify as an academy player.

Both Tarryn Thomas and Nick Blakey made Cal Twomey’s list of ten players in the 2018 draft to watch, suggesting that at this early stage at least, they’re elite talents.

Blakey’s situation is similar to that faced by Bailey Scott, son of Robert Scott, who played 132 games for Geelong and 113 for North Melbourne, including the ’96 premiership.

In addition to being eligible for both the Cats and the Roos, Bailey has also lived in Gold Coast’s academy zone long enough to potentially join them.

Let’s leave aside for this day the question of whether players whose fathers have played 200+ games at AFL level should also be considered academy eligible (they shouldn’t).

So what are the odds of these two talents choosing to come to North Melbourne? It’s hard to say at this stage, but let’s be optimistic for a moment.

It’s unprecedented for draftees to have their choice of three potential clubs in this way – the closest we’ve come previously was a few years back when Bailey Rice had the choice of Carlton or St Kilda.

Rice wound up picking the Saints who looked a bit further along the rebuild path but hasn’t been able to get a senior game in his two years there. Given some of the people Carlton have given games to in that time, you’d have to think things would’ve been different there.

Blakey and Scott both have the option to pick a larger club with a stronger record of recent success in Sydney and Geelong, if they want to. But, if you look at Rice as a cautionary tale, they might also consider the fact that early opportunities will be harder to come by there.

Of course, Brisbane and Gold Coast will be able to offer early games too – but the balance of probability suggests that most 18-year-old future draftees, given the choice, would choose a Victorian club.

A romantic angle also could be that while both players have the choice of three clubs, for both of them North is only club where their fathers have played in a premiership. Fair enough to be sceptical of this being a factor at all – I certainly am – but who knows.

Of course the more pessimistic angle would be to point out that Sydney and Geelong both have an attractive level of prestige and aura of recent success around them that North simply doesn’t right now – or that Sydney and Gold Coast both represent the chance to ‘stay home’ for these players.

Perhaps North will get both of these players, perhaps one, perhaps neither. We simply don’t know at the moment.

A less complicated potential father-son pick for North Melbourne is Joel Crocker, son of Darren, who played 165 games for North including the 1996 flag – and is currently the club’s Director of Coaching. This is a nice, simple one – if North decide they want him enough to pay the price, he’s theirs.

The other big question for North’s 2018 draft of course is whether or not they’ll finish low enough this year that their first-round draft pick comes before any bids for the likes of Thomas, Blakey or Scott.

Obviously there are a lot of unpredictable factors that will determine this. But my as-objective-as-I-can-be expectation for North this year is a bottom four finish, or bottom six, meaning one of the trio would have to be at the extremely pointy end of the draft pool for it to be at all likely that a bid comes before North’s first pick.

As such, a potentially ideal draft for North looks like this: another top four draft pick, Tarryn Thomas, Nick Blakey, Joel Crocker and Bailey Scott.

Depending on just how good Thomas, Blakey and Scott turn out to be, that could be an era-defining draft for the club.

North Melbourne also faces two big list decisions in 2018, and they both revolve around free agency.

The first is what to do with Shaun Atley. He is a restricted free agent this year and while he clearly has some talent, has never really come of age on the field despite years of threatening to.

We’ve seen clubs push out mediocre players through free agency in recent years in search of a compensation pick – Fremantle with Chris Mayne, Richmond with Tyrone Vickery have done this with success.

Should North be considering this course of action with Atley? If the Roos do have a low finish this year and a club is interested in him enough to qualify for a second-round pick, it could mean a selection in the top 25 – potentially very handy when it comes to paying for academy and father-son players.

My gut feel at this stage is that if there’s another club who wants Atley and they want him enough for North to be given good compensation, then he’ll probably be playing with them in 2019, though I would certainly be happy to see him remain in blue and white.

The other big free agency question, of course, is whether or not North Melbourne should throw their hats in the ring for Tom J Lynch.

He’s certainly a player North fans would love to have at the club, and there’s no doubt that the Roos have enough in the salary cap to match or better any offer a rival Victorian club can make.

That said, his move if he makes one won’t be about money – it will be about chasing success. And while I’m certainly an optimist when it comes to the Roos’ chances, Lynch himself probably won’t be.

Personally, I suspect the best use of North’s time in 2018 will be to focus on convincing Nick Blakey and to a lesser degree Bailey Scott that they belong in blue and white.

That said, there is a secret third option here, and that is to zag while other Victorian clubs are looking to zig.

Lynch is going to dominate discussion from a Gold Coast point of view and they’ll spend much of their year focusing on retaining him or, if he is set to leave, working out how best to handle that. Other Gold Coast players looking at a new contract might not get as much attention as they’d like.

That being the case, what I’d really love to see is for North to have a red hot crack at Kade Kolodjashnij.

The move makes sense for both parties. North needs a high-quality half-backer – as we’ll talk about later on, it’s the one area of the ground where the list lacks a really promising prospect.

And as for Kolodjashnij himself, the move would mean he can be closer to his brother Jake who plays for Geelong, and also be a part of a club that regularly visits his native state of Tasmania.

A lot is up in the air at the moment – we don’t know where Blakey or Scott will decide to go, and we don’t know if a play for Kolodjashnij is even remotely realistic. We also don’t know how we’d pay for it all in terms of trade currency.

However odds are North Melbourne will land both Tarryn Thomas and another high draft pick this year at a minimum, and then hopefully a little – or better yet a lot! – of gravy on top.

2019

The second year of this plan is a lot simpler, because it can be quickly summarised in just three words: Get Josh Kelly.

The Roos made a massive play for Kelly before last season even began and before Kelly had really stamped himself as an elite player in the competition.

There’s no doubt that he is one of the very best midfielders in the game. In The Roar’s top 50 on Monday we considered him the sixth best player in the AFL, behind only Dustin Martin, Patrick Dangerfield and Nat Fyfe as midfielders go – and he is only 23.

In the end, a mammoth offer of $10 million over nine years wasn’t enough to sway Kelly away from the chance to chase success at the Giants, and he signed for two further years.

However there was rumour after the fact to suggest that while Kelly had opted not to come home at this time, it could be a serious possibility at the end of 2019 when his new contract finishes.

It would be very fair to be sceptical here. But, this is really the best of both worlds for Kelly – an imminent shot at a flag with the Giants, and then a big payday contract with North. It makes at least some kind of sense.

That would be massive for North because having a superstar midfielder of Kelly’s ilk is the cornerstone of any truly great team.

How many teams in recent history have won a premiership without having a Brownlow Medal quality midfielder in the side? You could make an argument for maybe two in the last decade.

If Kelly can be that for North Melbourne, he’s worth whatever price needs to be paid.

2020

So North has had a big draft haul at the end of 2018 and then landed the big fish in 2019. Here’s what the side looks like in Round 1, 2020.

B: Marley Williams, Robbie Tarrant, Ben McKay
HB: Ed Vickers-Willis, Sam Durdin, Tarryn Thomas
C: Jy Simpkin, Luke Davies-Uniacke, Paul Ahern
HF: Luke McDonald, Mason Wood, Shaun Higgins
F: Jack Ziebell, Ben Brown, Kayne Turner
Fol: Todd Goldstein, Josh Kelly, Ben Cunnington
Int: Ben Jacobs, Taylor Garner, Billy Hartung, 2018 first-round pick

Todd Goldstein might well be replaced by Braydon Preuss by that point in time or some way might have been found to fit them both in the same side. Daniel Nielson could take the place of any one of the backline talls as well.

On top of that, the side would have as depth players like Ryan Clarke, Trent Dumont and Nathan Hrovat who were all particularly hard to leave out, more experienced types like Jamie Macmillan, Sam Wright and maybe Shaun Atley if still present, and recent draftees like Will Walker, Josh Williams, Mitch Hibberd and Nick Larkey just to name a few who could be in the mix.

Maybe Nick Blakey is there to add some more height in one area of the ground or another.

And if the Roos recruiters take my advice and have a crack at Kade Kolodjashnij they might have him to stick on one of the halfback flanks, arguably the only spot on the team sheet that is a real question mark.

Is it the best side in the league? No – certainly not for a few years at least. But in terms of the raw talent that is there to be developed, it might be the most North Melbourne has been able to put on the park since the 90s.

It’s a side that has potential, pace, and youth. A side that is ready to start moving back up the ladder.

The longer way round

You may have read the above and thought that a lot is needed to go right for North to turn it around in two years, and you would be correct. But it does not spell disaster for the Roos if this doesn’t go to plan – in fact it may even be the wiser of the two courses.

Consider that at the end of the 2020 season Josh Kelly will have been in the AFL for six years and so if North Melbourne wants to acquire him they will need to pay up in a trade, likely costing something in the realm of two first-round picks.

But, what if he were to stay at the Giants a further two years after that before being successfully poached by the Roos? In that case he would be a restricted free agent and the potential is there to get him for free, while also having the chance to draft those young kids and develop them.

Let’s take a squiz at how Round 1, 2022 could look in those circumstances…

B: Marley Williams, Daniel Nielson, Ben McKay
HB: Ed Vickers-Willis, Sam Durdin, Tarryn Thomas
C: Jy Simpkin, Luke Davies-Uniacke, Paul Ahern
HF: Luke McDonald, Mason Wood, Taylor Garner
F: Jack Ziebell, Ben Brown, Kayne Turner
Fol: Braydon Preuss, Josh Kelly, Ben Cunnington
Int: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 first-round picks

Not bad, eh?

Off the field

Before finishing up it’s worth mentioning the strides that the Roos have taken forward off the field in recent times.

Just a few days ago news came through that a $10m upgrade to North’s facilities has been approved that will allow Arden St to be used as a venue for the club’s AFLW team next year.

The club also will have its own VFL team starting this year and one would assume there are plans to have this side play at least partially out of Arden St in the near future also.

This is only stage one of a significant proposed redevelopment of the club’s headquarters which would turn Arden St into a community hub in an area that is set to grow significantly in population.

Combine that with nine profits in the past ten years for the club and you can understand why many fans like myself are as excited now about the club’s future prospects on and off the field as we ever have been.

And speaking of North fans… I’m part of the North Talk podcast in 2018 and we just released our first episode earlier this week. Have a listen on iTunes or Spreaker, or download our app from the App Store or Google Play.