Four burning questions for North Melbourne ahead of the AFL restart

Rhyce Shaw has revitalised north new engery recruitment in Brady Rawlings been away to a very successful club on and off Scott Clayton very experienced recruitment our top liners in b Cunnington Todd Goldstein s higgens Robbie Tarrant Ben brown all very good players our young players under 22 very promising our lack off plan b Cunnington being tagged Ben brown needs to change where he runs be the decoy sometimes good to see boomer more involved his ability to kick to a leading forward his deciation to his training diet should be able to bring on the young players need some more outside speed the upside is good go roos

Stirlo, just look at the shape of Rhyce's shiny head. He's the realest deal.

Great questions. I think the issue raised in Question 3 - the lack of direction - was what made the fans so disillusioned in the end with Scott. Then, with the immediate change for the better under Shaw, Question 1 was a yes. They had to go with him. The ‘one of the least exciting cohorts of under-24s’ call might be a bit harsh, or at least glosses over the very exciting under 22 cohort. North had 4 rising star nominations last year, more than any other club. That stat alone is cause for plenty of excitement.

A positive comment about one of the Scotts? I SEE IT BUT I DON'T BELIEVE IT. Kudos to you for not blindly hating, and actually viewing things logically

Chris who?

Expecting Mitch to play as well as Jeremy is akin to expecting Brandon Matera to play like his uncles.

Plenty of tummies will be tapped soon enough people, cunners dodgers chrisso better than any player out there.

To borrow from John Kennedy Snr "Don't remonstrate.........Do!" is Cunners ethos. No one will know what's up with Ben until it's too late.

looking back port losing wingard and polec gaining rozee duursma and butters think looking very much win win for all clubs

Ok then, he would prefer to keep his earning capacity and sponsorship than remonstrate with me if that's what you're implying.

It's very easy to be critical after the event. However when Scott came on board we were still a club struggling financially and struggling in the football department. Through the Laidley years we at times had no rookies - and missed out on a guy like Aaron Davey who was under our noses at Port Melbourne. Under Scott - he was compelled to have a crack (before the potential dawning of the Giants/Suns domination as was forecast). He got his squad into successive Prelim finals - remember we were leading the Eagles over there at half time..... In 2016 my personal desire was for the young guys to push the old guys out of the way. Alas - the young guys all got injured. Sam Wright wasn't that very young but that was his beginning of the end. Jacobs has been a huge absence. Guys like Wood and Garner should have 100+ games by now. EVW has found new and interesting ways to get injured. Scott did the right thing though - he gave Harvey/Petrie and Spud EVERY chance. But come the end of 2016 the right call was made - definitely on all but other than Harvey for whom it can be argued either way. Scott bloody a lot of young guys - and seemed careful not to over tax them. Who knows what personality conflicts there might have been. I quite liked Hibberd and Mountford. In 2017, Larkey got 2 games (and was way out of his depth and thankfully was given 2018 to build up in the VFL - patience paid off). Ben McKay got a game, Josh Williams, Wagner only added 4 and then was shipped out. Zurhaar debuted, Nielson of courese, and Sam Durdin who I quite like. Problem was - a lot of 'supporters' had spat the dummy over the change in direction. The retention of J.Waite was justified because there really was no ready support for Ben Brown.

I don't mind Mitch and think he could be a good player at Carlton, but he would not fit at North at all imo. I'm really with our forward group both now and how it will look in the future. Polec had a really good year last year I thought, although the real steal in that deal might have been Pittard who has been nothing nothing short of outstanding both on and off the field since he came to the club, reflected in his ascension to the leadership group this season. I think that deal was really a win/win for Port and North. Port had an outstanding draft and North would have lost the pick used in the trade to a Thomas bid anyway.

Yeah interesting to see how North tracks this season. I think Rhyce Shaw could be a little diamond in the rough as far as coaching goes.

I suggest you ask him personally.

Dursma will give you more than Polec on so many levels long term. A very talented lad. Is it fair to think most Port players weren't unhappy to see the back of Polec? Certainly viewed as a mercenary at Brisbane.

Who's Mitch McGovern and what has he done for anyone anyway? I would have loved Taryn Thomas at the port. Polec seems to be going pretty well, I really didn't want to let him go, luckily we picked up Dursma

What's up with his plugs pope, dairy farmers and advanced hair is a bit dodge.

There are points both good and pretty bad in this piece. I’ll address them as they appear in the text. 1. I get why someone external to the club and it’s supporter base would have this opinion. But as a fan, after it was clear that Simpson or Longmire couldn’t be enticed to leave their clubs, there was no other option. There might have been candidates with more experience in the top job, but Shaw made himself the outstanding choice through what he did after taking over as caretaker. The messaging, attitude and culture completely shifted off field and the performances on field significantly improved, but more importantly we got back to playing in a way that could easily be identified as a North Melbourne way. I think it’s fair to say a large part of the North fans became jaded with Scott over the last 18 months or so of his tenure, and Shaw brought an energy and enthusiasm that had been absent for too long. He also committed himself to buying into the culture and history of the club, which is something that is important to us, perhaps more so than at many other clubs. I think he is the real deal, but ultimately time will tell. 2. Fair question. The list strategy over maybe the last 3 years under Scott was a mess. There was no clear direction. One year we’re cleaning out old guys, the next we’re recruiting a bunch of 26-28 year olds, only for Scott to turn to the board apparently six months later and say he needs to do a full rebuild. There seemed to be a lack of cohesion between the coaching staff and the list management. Thankfully almost all those guys on both the list management and coaching side have been cleared out, and our strategy during the last off-season gained clarity as a result, moving towards improving our draft hand and trying to recruit guys who were on the younger side. But I think it’s too early in the new regime to make any sweeping judgments about the list strategy as it currently is until we see another 1 or 2 off-seasons from them. I take issue with the ‘least exciting u-24 group’ but I’ll address that in the next point. 3. I agree that for a long time was garbage (particularly 2015. Ugh, I feel disgusted just thinking about that draft), or at least has been proven to be in hindsight, but I think that’s changed since 2016 (which you acknowledge with your “wheel is turning” comment), a draft in which we recruited Simpkin, Larkey and Zurhaar, to the point where I know a lot of North fans and people think it’s the most exciting group of young players we’ve had possibly since the halcyon days of the ’90s. I think our 22 and under group is really good. Obviously those three above, but all of Thomas, LDU, Taylor, Scott, Bonar and Hayden have shown they’ve got something at AFL level, with the first 3 of that list the potential to be something special. Of course we’re not going to have had 50 gamers out of that group because other than Simpkin (Larkey was pick 73 and Zurhaar a rookie, so they were never going to play straight away, while Bonar was behind heaps at GWS) there just hasn’t been enough time for them to reach that milestone. After all, I think I’m right in saying that we had the most (or equal most) Rising Star nominations last year. That indicates that the young guys are doing something right. Also, some of those comments about draftees not reaching games milestones are completely meaningless without context. Sure, North’s had one one 50 gamer since 2014, but that means nothing without stats on how many other teams have had 50 gamers in that time. I’m actually not saying you’re wrong in that that stat being dreadful, but it needs context. The other context itself to consider is injury. I mean, to call Vickers-Willis and Walker “shockers” is just flat out wrong, especially comparing EVW to McGovern who I personally don’t think would work at North at all with Brown and Larkey. EVW has been excellent when he’s played and would have been a 50 gamer, if not 100 gamer, but for injury. Likewise, Walker has been out for the last 18 months too, but has lots of talent. I mean, sure, obviously you’d take Kelly, but again, North were hardly the only team that passed on him. I just don’t think calling guys who have been injured “shockers” as draft picks. Based on their ability alone, both those guys were in fact good draft picks and, touch wood, will get an opportunity to prove that. It’s actually worth thinking on this a bit more. EVW, Walker, Hayden, now LDU and Scott have all had serious or somewhat serious injury issues in their fledgling careers. Combine that with the perennially absent Jacobs and Garner and the amount of talent we have regularly unavailable gets incredibly frustrating. 4. Yeah, I agree. The season’s going to be a mess with teams playing ‘home’ games all over the place. I don’t think it really matters where teams play this season (other than at Geelong, which with its dimensions makes an obvious difference).

Cunnington's late effort forward certainly won the match for North. He is their Hercules. They need him in the middle otherwise the ball won't get forward enough. Maybe in a couple of years?

Should the roos experiment with more cunnington up forward? I caveat this by saying i haven't watched a lot of north in recent times, but perhaps they should try swapping ziebell and cunnington, meaning throwing jack in the middle and ben forward.