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How to waste a season, North Melbourne style

Brad Scott, senior coach of the Kangaroos, addresses his players. (Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)
Roar Rookie
14th August, 2018
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When it comes to setting expectations for your fan-base, the ‘go to’ chapter in the coaching playbook these days is the one centred on it being ‘better to aim low and achieve, than to aim high and fall short’.

It’s rare for a coach to come out and make any meaningful declarations and vague answers will always prevail when pushed by the media.

From a coaching perspective it’s the job-secure play – it buys time, hints at some kind of expert planning capability and when expectations are exceeded it provides meaningful contractual or market currency.

The narrative surrounding North Melbourne during pre-season was about how much of a lock they were for bottom four – I picked them for the spoon.

At their season launch, coach Brad Scott made a number of crafted remarks around “careful planning”, “looking to 2019 and 2020” and the rebuild-stoking “there will be some tough times ahead, make no mistake about that”.

The narrative was bottom-up build and the outcome has been a significant overachievement from that mark – 11 wins and nearly a finals appearance. What a year!

On face value, these results would imply a wave of optimism from the fans, something to be celebrated. When everyone picked you for the spoon (except Robert Walls, but that’s another story in itself right?), the wins have been against the odds.

But dive a little deeper, and it’s a major farce. The reality is, North have failed dismally on all counts in 2018.

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Put simply, the Kangaroos have stunk at stinking. It’s a unique capability, almost admirable in a ‘Shinboner spirit’ kind of way – but the decisions they have made so far this season have undermined the rebuild at every turn.

Why achieve mid-table obscurity with a group of players that have never shown themselves capable of legitimately challenging for a flag? Why spruik a narrative of rebuild and continue to hand games to 32-year-old Scott Thompson or 28-year-old Sam Wright? Great club servants, but not part of the future premiership window.

This isn’t a pro-tanking piece by the way, it’s a ‘play the kids’ piece.

Shaun Higgins has had the season of his life, but when it isn’t part of a multi-year drive towards a top-four challenge, then unfortunately it almost feels wasted.

Ben Cunnington winning hardball-gets is fool’s gold. It looks good on the surface when covered in dirt and grime, but when it squeezes out the next young mid coming through, it’s largely worthless.

Thompson and 29-year-old Robbie Tarrant have held the defence together with aplomb for a decade, but this was the year to hand the reins over to the key-position players coming through – Sam Durdin was a first round pick in 2014, Daniel Nielsen pick 25 in the same draft. They have played 15 games between them, and only one (Durdin) in 2018. They have played a combined 27 in the VFL this year. The key players of the future are presently being locked out by those of the past.

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Paul Ahern has played one breakout game and is a great story, but his ten games in 2018 took him past any of the three players North actually selected in his draft year (Durdin, Nielsen and Ed Vickers-Willis), and he has had two knee reconstructions in that time. For all the Roos paid unders for Ahern, apart from the fact EV-W has the best name in the comp, their return on investment has been pitiful on their actual picks.

Paul Ahern

Paul Ahern (Photo by Adam Trafford/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Mitch Hibberd, Declan Watson and Josh Williams were picks in the 30s in 2015. “Who?” you might ask and rightfully so. They have played six games between them in nearly three full seasons on the list. At full forward, Ben Brown is a huge part of the future. His potential tall counterpart up forward in Nick Larkey leads the VFL in goal-kicking, while the never-great and oft-injured Jarrad Waite holds him out.

It might be that these first and second round picks are simply not up for AFL standard, but how will anyone ever know this without a decent run in the seniors, and not five seasons in when they should be in their prime? It’s little wonder the likes of Sydney, Geelong and Hawthorn have such sustained success – they fold the kids in at the right time, throw them into the big time and let them learn on their feet.

North have been similarly farcical in the free agent stakes. Small market teams on the rebuild have little appeal in free agency, which NBA teams learnt decades ago. The best chance they have is landing future superstars in the draft.

For all the war-chest narrative, all the Kangaroos have achieved in publicly chasing Josh Kelly, Dustin Martin and Jordan de Goey is an external notion of buyer beware – and, to quote Police Chief Brady from Super Troopers, “Desperation is a stinky cologne.” That stench might now come in the form of overpaying Jared Polec. Perhaps finding a way to move up the draft order would be a better approach.

There has been some successes. The pick 15 given up for Jed Anderson doesn’t look quite so bad after a decent run of games, albeit the dodgy hammy concerns will take some time to shed. Jy Simpkin’s first name lacks something, but getting another 20 games into him in 2018 has been important. Will Walker and Luke Davies-Uniake have been eased into it.

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But the youth movement has simply not come as promised this year, and the major risk is a generation gap that takes a decade to overcome – see St Kilda and Carlton as cases in point. Both clubs missed out in multiple drafts in a row, and when the age-profile plot is a double-humped camel, you can’t compete with a racehorse.

The reality is that in 2018, North Melbourne played a hand Homer Simpson would be proud of in terms of setting expectations of a poor performance and careful rebuild. But even Homer would struggle to undermine his own narrative in a bumbling mess of middle-aged-driven mediocrity as North have achieved.

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