Review Another wasted season

I see things slightly differently
I didn’t think we were a top 8 team pre season.
I respect Buckley for having the Go nads in terminating Scotts when he did..this sideshow could’ve gone on for another year and a half
Our young players had a good run, playing a lot earlier than many of us anticipated
We pulled the trigger early, so not a complete waste, fingers crossed anyway


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Blooded lots of kids, found out lots of kids can play, got rid of Brad, had some good proper hard nosed wins.

Could we worse. Could have been Brad still here.
 
Apr 24, 2013
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Blooded lots of kids, found out lots of kids can play..........

Yeah. The 3rd or 4th batch in that time.

We haven't had an admin that was driven enough to succeed. We have lacked the single mindedness required to get the job done. Their main concern has been keeping us "engaged".

Winners get things done and everything else is bullshit.
 

marklovesbeer

Norm Smith Medallist
Apr 8, 2010
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Blooded lots of kids, found out lots of kids can play, got rid of Brad, had some good proper hard nosed wins.

Could we worse. Could have been Brad still here.
Few of my North mates think I’m a bit too optimistic sometimes, but when when times are dark, sometimes all you can do is try & find the light.

I’d backed Brad the whole decade, but after the Good Friday shambles I was done with him.

As mentioned, one big positive is we did eventually pull the trigger & didn’t let that sh*t play out all season & into the next. Who knows how much more damage may have been caused (thrashings, unhappy players etc.).

Even though his axing was perhaps too late to salvage this season, I think it was at least done early enough to get some sort of unity amongst the group & we’ve had some pretty memorable wins. When I say memorable there I am referring more for the players. A few of the victories post-Brad will surely stick with the group, particularly the younger guys.

The kids. Definitely a positive this season. Everyone loves the youth coming through, but this latest batch may actually be the base of an extended period of success (including LDU, Larkey, Z in here too). That’s f**ken exciting. Legitimately got some guns in there. I can’t remember the last time a new North player has excited me during a game as much as Taryn Thomas has this season.
Maybe Liam Anthony...?

And the hardness. To hear we’ve supposedly got opposition teams saying they were still sore two weeks after playing us & that it was the hardest game they’ve played all year... I love this as much as anything. I guarantee if Brad was still at the helm right now, we would not have heard that at all this season. The players read that sh*t too.

If we head into next pre-season with a bit of arrogance/confidence, potentially a much easier draw & plenty more km’s in ten legs of some of these young guns we have, then I feel this ‘wasted’ season may end up being looked back as the cornerstone of the next flag.

Maybe I’m just being an optimist though.
 

marklovesbeer

Norm Smith Medallist
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All season ive been pretty bullish that we could contend for finals with the list that we have. I WAS WRONG. Its time to cut, and cut deep, there is far too many plodders that play one good game in six. Have at it Rhyce.
Top six you’d cut?

Assuming by plodders you’re referring to players that are getting regular games at AFL level, so I don’t expect you to name obvious easy choices like Hrovat.
 
This is a review right

The good

Brutality is back(well sometimes).
We have some kids that can football.
There appears to be some sort of healing with former players.
We weren't held ransom to the idea of a payout(in whatever form it takes) and sacked Brad.
Collingwood, Richmond, Hawthorn wins.
Maj back on the park.
Doing something for replacement games at last.

The bad
Losing Scooter. There will be a hole.
Losing Wright.
The injury list. Especially to EVW, Hayden, Luke.
4 games in Hobart which included a stretch in the middle of the year where there was no home game for 2 months, not good enough.
The media having NFI about our list and the untruth that was spread after Brad's departure.
Not being in finals, again.


The Jury is out
Shaw and the restructuring of the Football department. Change was needed and is coming, unsure what they bring yet.

The ugly
The ugliest thing that happened this year was having all hope extinguished in the first 60 minutes of football.
Round 1 and Good Friday.

Summary
Saying it was a wasted year is correct in that we're not winning the flag. However as one astute poster said to me after we sacked Brad, there is hope back at our football club.

Change is coming and no one can tell in what form it's going to be.

I hope that Ben Buckley is bloody minded about number 5.

Sometimes football isn't always about football and this year we took a hit. Hopefully that hit sets up next year to be solely about football and the pursuit of number 5.
 
Apr 24, 2013
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All season ive been pretty bullish that we could contend for finals with the list that we have. I WAS WRONG. Its time to cut, and cut deep, there is far too many plodders that play one good game in six. Have at it Rhyce.

There are rumors of a fire sale.

If Buckley, Archer & Rawlings are fair dinkum, then the purge has only begun.

We need to instill ruthlessness again at North Melbourne.

Another year of the same generic spin & bullshit, and that might be the end of me.
 
Yeah. The 3rd or 4th batch in that time.

We haven't had an admin that was driven enough to succeed. We have lacked the single mindedness required to get the job done. Their main concern has been keeping us "engaged".

Winners get things done and everything else is bulls**t.

Actually, the main focus has been survival. They've achieved that, we're on a steady financial footing.

My understanding is that now the recognition has been made that the focus must be success, not survival.

And rightly so.
 
There is no survival without success.

Yep, agreed, and that recognition has been made (from what I understand).

Rightly so.

The ruthlessness is already on display - the sacking of the ex Port development bloke, Brad, nailing Brady while at West Coast.
 
There are rumors of a fire sale.

If Buckley, Archer & Rawlings are fair dinkum, then the purge has only begun.

We need to instill ruthlessness again at North Melbourne.

Another year of the same generic spin & bulls**t, and that might be the end of me.
I'd put up with another year of spin & bullshit!
 

Thndr

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Sep 25, 2015
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Yep, agreed, and that recognition has been made (from what I understand).

Rightly so.

The ruthlessness is already on display - the sacking of the ex Port development bloke, Brad, nailing Brady while at West Coast.

Thats all well and good, but, if we dont have the cattle on the ground on game day it will amount to nothing. Do i think we need to do a Carlton and have rebuild after rebuild ? No, it clearly does not work, just ask Melbourne. My problem is that when you kick one goal for the day it becomes very hard to attract good players to a small Melbourne club, so we are going to have to do it the hard way, go to the draft and trade for players that FILL A NEED. Otherwise we will just be doing this ......

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Moti

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We are good at drafting players that fill roles and give depth to the list. We suck at drafting elite or A grade talent. TT is the first for a while and that is only because we had to pick him.

Until we have a recruiting department that understands list building we will continue to be a patchwork quilt of a list


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Moti

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Hit the top end of the draft and stop playing plodders, only then we might see some changes.

Targeting free agents hasn’t work, and having one pick a year inside the top 20 hasn’t worked.

We’ve been flogging the same horse for the past 15 years which has resulted in an extended run of mediocrity.

And stay away from anyone compared to Chris Judd. Atley has basically never played in the centre and LDU is about 3 yards off Judd.
 
Are you going to continue with the "allusion" or do you have information?

As I've said a few times, from what people better placed than me have said, there is a recognition at the very top that a new ruthlessness is required, that 20 years without a flag is too long, that we have got to take a new success focused approach.

We have already seen that with Brad getting the arse, the recruitment of Brady, assistants going etc.

That said, I'm pretty sure that what you define as "soft" and the like is not what Buckley and co see as standing in the way of onfield success.
 

Psicosis

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May 7, 2012
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What i do hope as a support SB is that we don't also have another wasted off-season.

We need to nail the draft. We need to nail free agency. We need to nail whatever trades we do.

Minimal additions of talent to our list each year has left us in a holding pattern. It does feel like the last couple years that we have injected some genuine talent (LDU, TT, Simpkin, Zurhaar, Larkey, Polec, Ahern), and this needs to not only continue, but improve.
 

benbanjo

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Aug 16, 2009
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Keeping Brad on as coach for 10 years was just crazy stuff for starters.
Next to go should be the midfield/stoppages coach, i think that might be Moore?
You look at our midfield and think, well many of them don't cover ground well but should win contested ball, we are getting smashed in contested ball.
a lineup with all off Dumont, Cunners, JZ, Jmac, Lmac, Turner, etc.. isn't going to get it done week in week out, all have deficiencies in their game that get compounded when surrounded by the others. We ad this problem when Swallow was in the side too after his legs went.

While top end talent would be nice, personally i feel it's improvement from the bottom 5-6 players that will level out the team to a good level.

I like the fact that we are great at retaining players, however we probably need to look at offloading some every now and then for the greater good of the club, It's catch 22 since that may cause us to lose players due to them wanting to leave.

We all knew it at the time, but Brad Scott's team selections and game day strategy was moronic, playing his favorites that were held unaccountable for years was idiotic, We played Tom Campbell at CHF this year with Ben Brown next to him, while we had guys like Larkey and Zurhaar waiting for a crack.
He kept banging on about players needing to earn a spot which makes sense since our VFL side is rubbish, however it works both ways, senior players that served up rubbish for weeks needed to earn their spot too, yet were gifted game.

Losing Thompson is going to have a huge impact next season if we don't find a replacement, the amount of times he and Tarrant kept us in the game is amazing.
Last year Daw also helped out, this covered our midfield that currently is one of the worst clearance teams in the comp.

Next season i'm hoping more from the likes of, Anderson, Zurhaar, Larkey, Polec, Ahern, TT, i've given up on substantial improvements from the likes of Jmac, Lmac, JZ, Turner, Dumont.
 
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