Past Coach NMFC Senior Coach - David Noble has parted ways with NMFC

Coaches of the past.
Without trying to sound like a pseudo-philosophical w***er - sometimes things unfold as they do for later events to be possible.
I agree with everything you posted, especially that bit.

There are a lot of Monday's experts opining about this.
 
We had pick 12 and a full suite of 2019 picks as well as the remainder of our 2018 picks. We only needed to gain 4 positions in the draft.

We absolutely could have got it done.



No there's not. I think the majority of people wanted Polec, sure, but that's not to say there weren't a lot of people on here who didn't recognise the opportunity to double dip at the draft.

Plenty of people got seduced by one particular posters ramblings about only being 1 or 2 players away from a flag for the last 4 years. Remembering we were also chasing Gaff the same offseason.

We were one of the first to have an opportunity to do it under the new system and have remained the only club to trade it for a player, rather than try and move up or gain more future picks. As much as people sh*t on draft picks as magic beans, they still remain the most valuable trade commodity there is.

May, 2018.



May, 2018




July, 2018



August, 2018
If we'd done that we would have ended up with TT, Scott and another player right?

We probably wouldn't have had access to Curtis Taylor as a result.

While it remains to be seen whether he can match his early 2020 form if he does he will be incredibly valuable. 2023 is Polec's last year in this contract isn't it? If Thomas, Taylor, Scott and Polec are all valuable contributors that year then that trade will look good. Especially if we are serious finals contenders.
 

Pykie

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If we'd done that we would have ended up with TT, Scott and another player right?

We probably wouldn't have had access to Curtis Taylor as a result.

While it remains to be seen whether he can match his early 2020 form if he does he will be incredibly valuable. 2023 is Polec's last year in this contract isn't it? If Thomas, Taylor, Scott and Polec are all valuable contributors that year then that trade will look good. Especially if we are serious finals contenders.

Not necessarily.

We could have quite easily traded a 2019 pick back into the later rounds of the 2018 draft and still taken Taylor.


These are all hypotheticals, but taking Ben King or Bailey Smith wouldn't have made Taylor impossible.
 

Thewlis Dish

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I think people are re-writing history a bit. No doubt our list management team probably weren't the most creative bunch but we came out of the 2018 draft with Thomas, Taylor and Scott, while not touching our 2019 picks (which allowed us to engineer the Melbourne trade which gave us Perez and a double dip this year). We also don't know that teams about us would have been willing to trade down, given the strength of that draft pool.

I see the point about not maximising our position though.
 

Pykie

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I think people are re-writing history a bit. No doubt our list management team probably weren't the most creative bunch but we came out of the 2018 draft with Thomas, Taylor and Scott, while not touching our 2019 picks (which allowed us to engineer the Melbourne trade which gave us Perez and a double dip this year). We also don't know that teams about us would have been willing to trade down, given the strength of that draft pool.

I see the point about not maximising our position though.

Port literally used our pick to do that very thing though.

1606257622132.png


then


1606257681694.png



They identified that Fremantle were trading for Hogan and didn't necessarily need their pick 6.

I think it's a cop out tbh saying it wasn't a viable option at the time.

We still remain the only club who has finished near on the ladder to a top first round academy/NGA prospect and not tried to jump the bid or cashed in a future pick.

It says it all.
 
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Port literally used our pick to do that very thing though.

View attachment 1017938

then


View attachment 1017940


They identified that Fremantle were trading for Hogan and didn't necessarily need their pick 6.

I think it's a cop out tbh saying it wasn't a viable option at the time.

We still remain the only club who has finished near on the ladder to a top first round academy/NGA prospect and not tried to jump the bid or cashed in a future pick.

It says it all.
I find it interesting scott clayton talking about relationships he has with player agents and managers.. is it simply a case of the last admin didn’t have enough open dialog to be aware of the moves available?
Or were they just hell bent on topping up..
 

Thewlis Dish

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Port literally used our pick to do that very thing though.

View attachment 1017938

then


View attachment 1017940


They identified that Fremantle were trading for Hogan and didn't necessarily need their pick 6.

I think it's a cop out tbh saying it wasn't a viable option at the time.

We still remain the only club who has finished near on the ladder to a top first round academy/NGA prospect and not tried to jump the bid or cashed in a future pick.

It says it all.

Yes they did but they also gave up an early second, a mid second and a third to get that deal done. We were already banking points for Scott and Thomas in that draft so it would have been very difficult to engineer a similar sort of trade.

Remember Scott went a fair bit later than anticipated too. He didn't end up attracting a bid until 49 but we probably had to plan for a bid as early as 20-25.

I think we may have been more aggressive in trying to trade ahead of a TT bid if Scott hadn't nominated us.
 

Pykie

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Yes they did but they also gave up an early second, a mid second and a third to get that deal done. We were already banking points for Scott and Thomas in that draft so it would have been very difficult to engineer a similar sort of trade.

Remember Scott went a fair bit later than anticipated too. He didn't end up attracting a bid until 49 but we probably had to plan for a bid as early as 20-25.

I think we may have been more aggressive in trying to trade ahead of a TT bid if Scott hadn't nominated us.

We can't ignore that this draft was hyped as the best draft in 10-15 years though either. It was well known the quality of it prior to it.


Look at GWS last year, they did everything in their power to get a pick ahead of Tom Green. They even burnt a future first rounder in doing so because they knew they would be gaining another top 5 kid in Ash once ahead of the bid and any "overs" would cancel each other out.

Now, that would have cost us LDU in the end, but Pick 11 + a 2019 First Rounder may have gotten us as high as Max King or Rankine.

There were plenty of scenario's available to us, we could have supplemented points to cover for Scott with future picks like every other club with a large volume of academy, NGA or F/S have been able to do since.


Sydney will take a top 5 player + a top 10 pick in Campbell this year + they have another top 30 kid to cover in Gulden.

They have more points to cover this year than we had to in 2018.

You can do it if you plan correctly.
 

Thewlis Dish

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We can't ignore that this draft was hyped as the best draft in 10-15 years though either. It was well known the quality of it prior to it.

Look at GWS last year, they did everything in their power to get a pick ahead of Tom Green. They even burnt a future first rounder in doing so because they knew they would be gaining another top 5 kid in Ash once ahead of the bid and any "overs" would cancel each other out.

Now, that would have cost us LDU in the end, but Pick 11 + a 2019 First Rounder may have gotten us as high as Max King or Rankine.

There were plenty of scenario's on available to us, we could have supplemented points to cover for Scott with future picks like every other club with a large volume of academy, NGA or F/S have been able to do since.

I think we were probably happy to take Thomas and Scott out of that draft. I'm not disagreeing that we could/should have been more creative but I also don't think there was a clear pathway to trade up. If it was hyped as much as you say it was then getting up into the top ten would have come at a premium. I also think a club like GWS is in a much better position to "burn" future firsts because of how easily they are able to engineer first rounders through a combination of early concessions, go home factors and their academy fruits.

I don't think we're going to look back on the 2018 draft/trade period as being especially damaging tbh. It would be nice to have Bailey Smith or Ben King certainly, but we still grabbed three potential stars who are going to play a lot of footy for the club.

Anyway I don't think we're disagreeing all that much, I just don't think a pathway to get ahead of a Thomas bid was as clear cut as you think it was.
 

Pykie

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The biggest mistake was the damn "honest battler" pride of trying to scrape into the finals tbh.

We finished 9th, 4% above Adelaide in 12th on the same points (who bid on Thomas).

We scraped 3 pt wins against the 15th place Lions, won by 3 goals against the 16th place Saints and knocked off West Coast (premiers) by 40 pts in Tassie in the last month.


Who remembers any of these games now?

Because in reality they were the things that really cost us.

We walk into the draft with pick 7 otherwise and are guaranteed of one of King or Smith + Thomas.

Just not knocking off West Coast would have meant we got pick 7.

It's amazing the sliding door moments like these in history.

1606259405939.png
 

Psicosis

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I think people are re-writing history a bit. No doubt our list management team probably weren't the most creative bunch but we came out of the 2018 draft with Thomas, Taylor and Scott, while not touching our 2019 picks (which allowed us to engineer the Melbourne trade which gave us Perez and a double dip this year). We also don't know that teams about us would have been willing to trade down, given the strength of that draft pool.

I see the point about not maximising our position though.

This sentence really says it all.

They were not creative, which has set us back.
 

Ether

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No there's not. I think the majority of people wanted Polec, sure, but that's not to say there weren't a lot of people on here who didn't recognise the opportunity to double dip at the draft.
To clarify, I wasn't referring to you, Pykie. More about the Polec and Pittard threads the following year where many posters were claiming we'd made out like bandits from that trade.
 

big_e

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The biggest mistake was the damn "honest battler" pride of trying to scrape into the finals tbh.

We finished 9th, 4% above Adelaide in 12th on the same points (who bid on Thomas).

We scraped 3 pt wins against the 15th place Lions, won by 3 goals against the 16th place Saints and knocked off West Coast (premiers) by 40 pts in Tassie in the last month.


Who remembers any of these games now?

Because in reality they were the things that really cost us.

We walk into the draft with pick 7 otherwise and are guaranteed of one of King or Smith + Thomas.

Just not knocking off West Coast would have meant we got pick 7.

It's amazing the sliding door moments like these in history.

View attachment 1017950
It's quite bizarre to think that winning games is a problem.

Losing is the problem, not winning.

Losing to Gold Coast in round one, losing to the Bulldogs and Adelaide by seven and nine points late in the season. Win those and we're knocking on the door of the top four, and that puts us in a very different position moving forward. Maybe it helps us land some of the good big fish, which starts to make success sustainable. Who knows?

And even if we did finish down the bottom, there's every chance we don't pick one of the Kings, or if we did, we them into spuds under a crappy coach and with a crappy development program.

We can't know for certain, but what we can be sure of is that a club that wants to lose games to improve their draft position will find themselves with the worst possible culture, and that's not something many of us would stand for.
 

pupstar

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It's quite bizarre to think that winning games is a problem.

Losing is the problem, not winning.

Losing to Gold Coast in round one, losing to the Bulldogs and Adelaide by seven and nine points late in the season. Win those and we're knocking on the door of the top four, and that puts us in a very different position moving forward. Maybe it helps us land some of the good big fish, which starts to make success sustainable. Who knows?

And even if we did finish down the bottom, there's every chance we don't pick one of the Kings, or if we did, we them into spuds under a crappy coach and with a crappy development program.

We can't know for certain, but what we can be sure of is that a club that wants to lose games to improve their draft position will find themselves with the worst possible culture, and that's not something many of us would stand for.
Totally agree do we not win games next year finish bottom just to get Horne next year. Ask Noble his thoughts on that.
 

Shinboner1

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Totally agree do we not win games next year finish bottom just to get Horne next year. Ask Noble his thoughts on that.
From what I'm hearing from noble there's no way we'll tank games like we potentially did in 2020.
That's not to say we wont be playing the kids and if they lose then so be it.
 

Passmore

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Totally agree do we not win games next year finish bottom just to get Horne next year. Ask Noble his thoughts on that.

I certainly don’t think we’ll be throwing games, but he did mention in the Brisbane interview from a couple of years ago that they wouldn’t be looking to recruit or play a style to eek out a win here or there. Everything was done with the big plan in mind. Marrying that up with what our blokes have said late in the season and over the off season, I imagine we’ll have the same mindset.
 
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The biggest mistake was the damn "honest battler" pride of trying to scrape into the finals tbh.

We finished 9th, 4% above Adelaide in 12th on the same points (who bid on Thomas).

We scraped 3 pt wins against the 15th place Lions, won by 3 goals against the 16th place Saints and knocked off West Coast (premiers) by 40 pts in Tassie in the last month.


Who remembers any of these games now?

Because in reality they were the things that really cost us.

We walk into the draft with pick 7 otherwise and are guaranteed of one of King or Smith + Thomas.

Just not knocking off West Coast would have meant we got pick 7.

It's amazing the sliding door moments like these in history.

View attachment 1017950
I loved that win against West Coast.
 
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I loved that win against West Coast.

Paul Ahern.

May his career RIP.
 

pupstar

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In any case claiming that we were worse off winning games than losing them makes me very uncomfortable.
Correct how are we suppose to be taken seriously or attract quality players or in that way keep our young players if we have not got that will to win as many games as possible. We must have a winning culture reguardless of any other circumstances.
 

AnEmptyChair

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The biggest mistake was the damn "honest battler" pride of trying to scrape into the finals tbh.

We finished 9th, 4% above Adelaide in 12th on the same points (who bid on Thomas).

We scraped 3 pt wins against the 15th place Lions, won by 3 goals against the 16th place Saints and knocked off West Coast (premiers) by 40 pts in Tassie in the last month.


Who remembers any of these games now?

Because in reality they were the things that really cost us.

We walk into the draft with pick 7 otherwise and are guaranteed of one of King or Smith + Thomas.

Just not knocking off West Coast would have meant we got pick 7.

It's amazing the sliding door moments like these in history.

View attachment 1017950
And if we had have won every game that year we would have won the flag.

These kinds of what-ifs are pointless and serve no purpose. It's similar to looking back at any of a million decisions made during a game and blaming one or two for the result.

And besides your attitude here runs counter to what sport and following a sports team is about. It's all about winning in the moment, and just because we don't necessarily care about those wins 3 years later, it doesn't mean that they weren't extremely enjoyable at the time.

EDIT: Actually, I just want to add, by all means critique list management and other football management decisions, but this sort of revisionism around whether we should have won games or not is ridiculous. It reminds me of everyone here getting pissed off when we beat the Lions in the "Cam Rayner Cup." There were people seriously annoyed that we'd won a game by 10 goals It's just nonsense. And we ended up drafting the guy who very well could be the best player in that draft anyway. We should aim to win every single game we play. Anything less is a betrayal of the fans and members. The actual strategy in terms of building a premiership list shouldn't rely on losing games of footy.
 
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