Opinion
When you scroll down the list of the AFL top 100 game-players, you will find 12 players who represented the Kangaroos on the list, ten of whom played at least 300 games.
Yet on the North Melbourne club list of the top 100, only five players have passed the 300-game total for the club.
Why is this so? It shows the difficulty that North Melbourne has had in attracting new recruits and retaining champion footballers to the club, but also the success they have had in bringing in established champions who have finished their careers in the royal blue and white vertical stripes of the club.
From the time of their entry to the VFL in 1925 until their first premiership 50 years later, the Shinboners were regarded as the cellar dwellers of the league despite a grand final appearance in 1950 and again in 1974, which was the first of five grand finals in a row, including the 1975 and 1977 premierships.
Since then, the Kangaroos have been moderately successful and have built their support base significantly by being the innovators of the league with Friday night football and now home games in Tasmania.
Courtesy of a rule change in the 1960s, the club was able to recruit star players from other clubs under the first free-agent agreement (ten-year rule). These included Barry Davis (Essendon), Doug Wade (Geelong) and John Rantall (South Melbourne), who all played in the 1974 and 1975 grand finals.
By 1977 all were gone, but had been replaced by Stan Alves (Melbourne), Brent Crosswell (Carlton) and Peter “Crackers” Keenan. Since then, the Kangaroos have recruited regularly from other clubs but have also produced their own home-grown champions.
Two of the three players who currently sit on top of North Melbourne’s top 100 game-player list played all their senior football with the Kangaroos. They are headed up by greatest AFL game-player of all time, Brent Harvey.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
“Boomer” broke Michael Tuck’s game record in 2016 at a time when North Melbourne fielded the oldest ever team in the AFL. Harvey’s record speaks for itself: five club best-and-fairest awards, premiership player, club captain for three years and All Australian four times.
Also in that oldest team of all time in 2016 was number two on the Kangaroos’ greatest game-players list, Drew Petrie. Both left the club at the end of the season but while Harvey retired, Petrie tried his luck for one more season with the West Coast Eagles.
In 2017, he played 16 games for the Eagles, which took his AFL games tally to 332, the same total as Leigh Matthews and Corey Enright, and earned him a share of 26th spot on the AFL all-time top 100 game-players list. In that one season at the Eagles he also kicked 16 goals, including three in his last two finals games for the club.
Born and raised in Ballarat, Petrie played his early football at Ballarat and the North Ballarat Rebels. He led the Kangaroos’ goal-kicking on five occasions, making the All Australian team in 2011. His total of 444 goals makes him level in the AFL top 100 goal-kickers with three other champions: Robert Walls (Carlton and Fitzroy), Alex Jesaulenko (Carlton and St Kilda) and Malcolm Blight (North Melbourne).
Glenn Archer, considered by some to be the most fearless footballer to ever play the game, is number three on the North Melbourne top 100 game-players list. His courage was recognised by winning six AFLPA Robert Rose Awards for the most courageous player in a nine-year period.
He also made three All Australian teams and won two premierships, picking up the Norm Smith Medal in his first one (1996).
They are three great champions of the Kangaroos.
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