advocating for the death of clubs that mean so much to hundreds of thousands of people is such a coward take.

that point about the Saints’ training location is laughably bad too. How many clubs are actually based in their eponymous suburb?

Awful piece from an ‘expert’

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.

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).

North’s current top 5 in their BnF would be Brown, Cunnington, Higgins, Tarrant and Anderson. Only two of those guys are of the truly senior brigade, although I would expect that both have, at the very least, 3-4 years left in them.

It is true that the spine is full of senior players, with Brown the only exception: Tarrant, Thompson, Goldstein, Waite, Brown. This is the correct way to build imo. Have senior players take on most of the responsibility, allowing the youth to flourish around them without the pressure of having that expectation of being the main man. Simpkin, Anderson, Wood, Vickers-Willis, Clarke, Hartung, Davies-Uniacke etc have all played good footy this year as a result. This is where they’re different to the likes of Carlton, Brisbane and others, where too much responsibility is places on the shoulders of young players, hindering their ability to just play footy with a relaatively free spirit. It was the same problem that crippled Melbourne’s rebuild for many years. see: Trengrove and Grimes captaincy.

it’s true that every player in that spine, apart from Goldstein, are playing career-best footy, which bodes extremely well for the short-term, however it doesn’t mean, as you say, that North are ‘two’ injuries away from being a bottom four team. That’s just not true if you bothered to do the slightest amount of in-depth research of the list.

Durdin and McKay, both of whom were mentioned in Scott’s presser today, have regularly been in the best 2-3 for North’s VFL team this season. In fact, I think one or the other has been judged the best player for four or five weeks in a row now. The plan is for them to take over from Thompson in the next year or so, and then later down the line, Tarrant. They’d be playing senior football at a lot of clubs lower down the ladder right now, so if either of the two senior guys get injured they’ve got ready-made replacements.

Waite will most likely retire at the end of this season, although there has been a bit of talk that he might play one more. When he goes, or if he gets injured, I suspect a small would come in for him with the forward line restructured with Brown, Wood and Ziebell the ‘talls.’ However, his long term replacement is shaping up as Nick Larkey, who is four goals off the top in the VFL leading goal kickers despite being a second year tall and still skinny.

As for Goldstein, Preuss was spoken about last season as one of the most promising young rucks in the game. Again, he’s be playing senior footy at many clubs right now.

Our spine is important, but it’s long-term future looks positive, while we can also cover an injury or two right now sufficiently with players who are in excellent form in the 2s. Like any club though, if we have multiple injuries, then yeah, we would be in trouble, just as we were last year and the year before when at times we had 9-10 of our best 22 missing. But one or two injuries right now wouldn’t hurt us too much, unless arguably, it came in the midfield where we are a but light on for quality depth, which will hopefully be rectified in the Free Agency period and draft later this year.

That’s the point. The clubs should have no say in development at an underage level, it should be AFL-operated. As I said in the article, they are a good thing. They work. But they should be impartial, free of club influence. True equalisation would mean that no club has priority access to any kid; that all of them are free to be drafted by any club in an open draft.

Thanks for the considered reply, Maggie. I didn’t have time earlier to give your comment the proper reply that it deserved.

“You have used Nick Blakey as the example to criticise the academies on the grounds they are a retrograde step away from equalisation. Yet you implicitly approve father/son selections by citing North Melbourne and Brisbane‘s frustration and disappointment in Blakey’s decision. If your concern is equalisation, then you should start by criticising father/son selections. They clearly compromise the draft while having no talent pool growth justification.”

That’s a fair comment. Personally, I would have no problem with the F/S protocol being looked at as part of a large-scale review of the academy/FS bidding process and the draft. I suspect I would be in the minority on that issue though. Equalisation should mean that every u/18 prospect would be available to be drafted by any club, no matter where they’re from or where their fathers played football.

That’s another one for the perpetual tradition vs modernity debate.

“What is more concerning is the Fairfax media report this week that clubs are asking about the backgrounds of every player on TAC Cup lists, who therefore are already in the pathway program, to determine whether they fill the criteria for priority access through their Next Generation academies (NGAs). The intent of the NGAs was to develop new talent from under-represented population groups, not to sign up promising young players already in established pathway programs.”

No argument whatsoever from me here. I completely agree. As it stands, the players that the clubs have access to through the NGA weren’t the intended targets in my opinion, see: Tarryn Thomas. He’s a kid that was touted for the very top since he was 14/15, and for just as long he’s been talked about as one of Tassie’s best prospects in years. I’m a North fan, and, frankly, I think it’s utterly ridiculous and, yes, completely unfair that we have priority access to him simply because the AFL arbitrarily allocated us a zone in Tassie for multicultural and indigenous kids, and he happens to live there and be of indigenous descent. As I touched on in the article, my opinion is that the academies are well-intentioned, but as it stands they are seriously flawed in execution.

“Your argument that the AFL should provide all the funding, with the academy development programs remaining unchanged and academy players going into the general draft, sounds easy in principle (although it would be very costly). In practice I can’t see any incentive for clubs to run academies if there is no chance of gaining priority access to some players. And the AFL itself is not going to run academies – it is an administrative organisation not a coaching/development body.”

The AFL is ostensibly an administrative organisation, but in reality it is the body that controls everything. It allocates funds for grass-roots development across the country and it appoints people, not only administrators but coaches and development officials, as it sees fit. Funding and controlling the academies would not be beyond the AFL’s purview. In fact, I think it would be the best body to do it. It would mitigate conflicts of interest, reduce cynicism, and remove temptation for clubs to operate nefariously in their pursuit of the best kids if the academies were AFL-controlled with the knowledge that the athletes produced would be available to any club that wished to draft them.

“It is also likely that the appeal of academies to attracf young players (and their parents) would be lessened without both club ties and the potential that, if good enough, players could get drafted in their home state. You touch on the latter and dismiss it, but it is a significant issue in cultural groups for whom family connections are very strong. And these are some of the groups NGAs in particular are intended to reach.”

I did. It’s my belied that the draft/equalisation shouldn’t be compromised simply because a few kids don’t want to leave their home state. It’s not worth it. And if a kid did leave Sydney and wanted to return their due to homesickness, then he would be free to pursue that through trade or FA, just as Patrick Dangerfield, Jake Lever and countless others have done. But we shouldn’t be undermining equalisation just to do this before he’s even drafted.

There are a few sacrifices that all prospective draftees have to make if they want to pursue their AFL career, and this is one of them. It’s not something unique to our sport either, in fact, with the absence of non-consensual trading, they’re treated much better in this respect than their foreign counterparts. It’s part of being a professional athlete; a life that has far more privileges than challenges, it must be said.

‘By the way, clubs do not get ‘unfettered access’ to players coming out of academies. They get priority access through the draft points and bidding process. In the unlikely event that one club had several academy players so good that they were bid on in round 1, the club would almost certainly have only the points to take one of the players, with the others going elsewhere. Quite a few players coming out of the northern academies have already been drafted by other clubs.’

By ‘unfettered,’ I mean they have exclusive rights to that player. Perhaps that was poorly phrased on my part. Yes, players have been passed up by the Northern clubs before. In fact, North have been beneficiaries of this when they drafted Corey Wagner, Josh Williams, and Declan Watson, but these tend to be later picks, rather than the choice prospects. As it stands, some clubs have/had exclusive access to the best kids, so first-round draft talents, by virtue of their geographical location, ie. Heeney, Mills, Hipwood, Blakey, Thomas etc, and it looks like there will be plenty more as a result of the NGAs as they become more influential. I don’t think this should be the case in an uncompromised draft. These players should be available to any team.

Please, tell me where I said he should be sent to North.

I’m starting to think that everybody replying didn’t actually read what I wrote. Never did I say that we should scrap them, just that they should be moved out of the hands of the clubs, and that the kids that come from the academies should enter the open draft.

And that’s why I said that the academies should stay, but they should be put in the hands of the AFL, not the clubs.

The AFL allocated millions of dollars every year to development. This would be a most worthwhile target for those funds.

What is a silly argument is that clubs should be able to gather 100s of kids every year, identify the most talented, provide them with incentives and a whole bunch of other things to stick around knowing that they’re the only club that has access to them. That’s not how equalisation works.

As I said in the article, I, too, think they are terrific, and they obviously work. My contention is the unfettered access that the northern clubs have to those kids, and the priority access that all other clubs have to NGA prospects. All players that go through the academy process should then enter the national draft, where they can be picked up by anyone.

Just as I believe Nick Blakey should either be F/S or in an open draft, I also believe the same should apply for North Melbourne’s NGA prospect, Tarryn Thomas.

That’s completely irrelevant. The option simply shouldn’t have been there in a supposedly ‘equal’ competition.

‘Collateral damage so Victorian clubs can win more flags.’ This is unfounded nonsense.

The Sydney Swans academy was established in 2011. Sydney won the flag without an academy graduate in 2012, and also before the academy existed, in 2005. They made Grand Finals, as well, without the influence of the academies.

As far as I can see, Brisbane didn’t have an academy from 2001-04 when they played in four GF’s and won three flags.

Both of those clubs have won a flag more recently than the likes of Carlton, North, Melbourne, Melbourne, Essendon and St Kilda, and played in GF’s more recently than all except the Saints.

You’ve also touched on something which is implicitly noted in the article, and that goes to the motivation for their establishment. They are not designed to give any clubs an advantage or a leg up, and the idea that they should be in what is supposed to be an equal competition is ludicrous.

The northern academies are designed to draw kids away from other sports in a competitive market, and the NGAs are there to provide pathways to multicultural and indigenous. Those are the ‘real world factors’ that make them necessary.

Moved into the AFL hands, the academies could do exactly this. The pathways would stay the same, but at the end of it the most talented kids wouldn’t be able to be hoovered up by clubs whose priority access to them is downright unfair.

Yeah, I get that, but I don’t think Melbourne’s progress can be measured in honourable losses, or excellent efforts anymore. With where they’re at going into 2018 and after their preseason, a statement would have been beating a perennial top 4 contender. Near enough isn’t good enough for the Dees anymore and I think they need to be judged accordingly.

For me, it’s more that it could so easily have been avoided. Football is played in the Top End during those conditions by virtue of that being where they are, if that makes sense. It wasn’t necessary for the AFL to do the same. They have a whole country and endless fixturing options to make sure that something like this was avoided. It’s an amateurish decisions from what is a professional organisation. The spectacle, the time, the matchup, everything about it did no favours for anyone involved.

Also, it’s hard not to think of the disadvantage to North as they head into arguably their biggest game of the year this Good Friday. They’ll have a six day break after not only playing in humidity, but also having to slog through the wet, against a Saints side who played in the far more comfortable confines of Etihad.

It wasn’t a disastrous result for the Dees by any means, but their pre-season was so good, and there was so much talk about them being a Melbourne team that could finally challenge again that when they couldn’t back it up in the real stuff it came as a slight disappointment.

Perhaps they’re a victim of the external expectations, but it was a false start from them when they needed to make a statement to say that they’re serious against another challenger.

Personally, I still expect them to be there or thereabouts in 2018, but they come out of round 1 with more questions than answers when everyone was expecting them to make a statement.

Thank you, Gordon. I really appreciate the kind words!

Old bodies? North have one of the youngest lists in the league.

This is just what you expect to hear from a player heading into the season. As a fan I would be disappointed if they came out with, “Yeah, this is going to be a development year because we’re hoping to get a good draft pick in this years super draft.”

Most North fans are reasonable with the expectations this year, knowing that in fact it will be a year to develop the youth, of which there is plenty with an eye to the talent, academy and FS picks on offer in 2018s draft.

Wallace is hardly the most erudite of commentators and the irony of his moniker, ‘The List Manager’ shouldn’t be lost in anyone.

I think North may turn a couple of those close losses from last year into wins and finish 10th-12th.

As a North fan, I’m actually concerned that this might happen. With a bumper 2018 draft on the cards and a number of talented academy/FS picks eligible for North rated in the top 40 prospects, it would be a shame to not also receive a top 1-4 pick in addition to those players.

This draft could be the one to set us up for a decade. I would happily accept on year of pain and development for that to happen.

Thanks James! I appreciate the feedback and it’s definitely encouraging that there seems to be at least a couple of people who liked it and thought it a topic worthy of discussion.

I will definitely attempt to contribute more pieces in the future.