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Analysis Is the AFL responsible for North Melbourne's poor performance?

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Billy ray said:
north should request all monday night home games at the mcg, starting at 615pm.
get the city crowd to go direct from work to the game
they'll make it a success and in 10 years the big 4 will take it, but, worth a shot to differentiate them from other teams
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Would shaft every team who plays them on a Monday into either a follow up Sunday game, or a 3-5 day break. Won't happen.

Also North vs anyone on a Monday at the MCG would make the average Melbourne game look packed. It'd be an embarrassing eyesore.
 
Obeanie1 said:
Well the current reigning premier gets priority access to players every year don't they?

Whilst also recently landing two top class father son mids plus Fletcher cheap.

PLUS access to free agents.

At the same time whilst winning flags and playing in grand finals.

Those are all AFL policies being applied.

AFL policies that are allowing the best teams to keep getting better at the expense of teams not travelling well at all.

The AFL needs to back off assisting the top teams getting better with policies that are creating an unequal playing field.

Why the hell should the premier be getting any assistance at all?
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The nsw and Queensland teams have won a single flag between them in the last decade, the same amount your mob has won.

Are you really against a policy that is helping to increase the amount of talent in the game?

Father son is available to every team, so it's just coincidence that they happen to be good at the same time.
 

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2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020. In each one of those years North Melbourne has finished in the bottom two. During that time they've had Rhyce Shaw, David Noble, Brett Ratten, Leigh Adams and Alistair Clarkson as head coaches. That right there tells you why they've had so much poor performance.
 
While the AFL of the past wouldn't have been too sad to see us go, the current lot aren't responsible for our overpaid duds refusing to put in any effort like we saw last Friday and the countless before that, nor are they responsible for us guttiing the list as deep as we did in 20-21.

We have a terrible culture fostered where just being competitive for 1 or 2 quarters is the bar. As long as you make good money, make some feel good tiktok videos with your mates during the week and have a laugh, that's all that matters to current day NMFC.
 
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Mad props to anyone who still supports North Melbourne and hasn’t completely given up on the sport, despite how disheartening it must be to pour your emotions into a club that just can’t seem to find success.
 
The truth is there is no possible bigger new club than North Melbourne, especially after Tasmania comes in.

Think about it, obviously a new Victorian club is never going to happen, but a third side in Perth or Adelaide, one in Sunshine Coast, Northern Queensland, NT, Canberra or even New Zealand would not be bigger than North Melbourne.

So having them competitive is in the league's best interest.
 

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_jrtp09_ said:
The coach is bleeding them dry financially and has done squat to justify his exorbitant salary. Reminds me of the disastrous period when Malthouse went to Carlton.
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What will it take for Clarko to be under the spotlight? I expected to see significant improvement from them.
 
Liam Boy said:
It's hard to point at a single cause for how it's gotten this bad, it's been a lot of things, some that were outside our control and some that weren't. It's easy to point to things in hindsight and ask how anyone could have been so stupid, but there weren't really people making those calls at the time. Appointing a very young, mostly untried coach in Rhyce Shaw could've been a good move but the COVID hub was the worst possible circumstance for a brand new coach who had yet to find his footing and develop a stable system around himself. David Noble was a horrible coach but he was appointed on the recommendation of Paul Roos who the AFL sent in to try to fix the club, trusting that he would actually be committed to that job instead of immediately dusting his hands off and ****ing off to Hawaii. Cutting the leaders we cut when we did was probably a mistake, but then there's random freak occurrences like Ben Cunnington getting testicular cancer, or Jaidyn Stephenson breaking a hip falling off his BMX, or going back further there's shit like Ben Jacobs getting the world's weirdest head knock right at the beginning of a long-term deal and never making it back, or the tragedy with Majak Daw.

Looking at the draft hands we've had it looks amazing, and then you see how every single time we had a top pick there was an academy or father-son, or in several cases multiple, that we probably would've preferred to take had that been possible. Ugle-Hagan, Darcy, Daicos, both Ashcrofts, Jed Walter, absolute guns and players who would've perfectly filled specific list needs and made us more competitive immediately. Meanwhile the only top academy player we've lucked into turned out to be a serial harasser of women who spat the dummy every time we tried to get him to stop. We might've had Ryley Sanders too, but of course a Victorian club asking to select an eligible academy player in the first round was the stupidest, most ridiculous request ever. Until they reversed that decision less than a year later because Essendon had one coming through.

The assistance the AFL has given us over this period has been talked up like a massive advantage, absolute stacks of first round picks that we irresponsibly pissed away like some dole bludger ripped from the pages of the Herald Sun, but in reality what we got was a future 2nd and 3rd we had to trade for players (sent to Freo for perenially injured Griffin Logue and honest trier Darcy Tucker), a second rounder in one of the most compromised drafts not to feature a brand new club, and two future second rounders that the AFL officially stipulated could be taken off us if we didn't trade them and they decided we didn't deserve them anymore once the draft came around (to simplify, we traded these 3 picks for the picks used to take Wil Dawson and Riley Hardeman who are probably years away from moving the needle). Compare that to just a few years earlier when the Suns, who were bad but nowhere near as bad, got a 2000s-style first round priority pick allowing them to take the guy who's now their captain.

So no, I don't think it's an AFL conspiracy, but they probably would've done more had it been a club that certain members of the administration deem more valuable to their business interests. They've been happy to give us the shit end of the stick with the fixture consequences of their stupid Opening Round farce, or call every single kick we make not 15 as part of their rule directive of the week, but I think it has more to do with there not being an Eddie McGuire that can spark a public outrage when we're mistreated than any secret sabotage plot. If they really wanted to kill us, they'd do what they did with Fitzroy: kick us out of our home ground for no reason then refuse to sign off on new sponsorships and game-selling schemes while we slowly go further into debt until there's nothing left, then pretend they did us a favour by slapping our branding on the latest failed franchise.
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Good post.
When I look at it there’s several factors at play.

Once the club rejected the Gold Coast move they made plans to be Melbourne based but generate a revenue through selling games to the detriment of long term growth.

Then in 2016 they gutted the list and offloaded all leadership at the club. It was a Brad Scott call and once he realised the error of his ways he left with his reputation intact and the north list in disarray.

Roos coming in to provide guidance was a massive mistake, so too was appointing Shaw as coach without seriously advertising the position.

Then Hood has come in as president and while they landed their big fish in Clarko, they are ridiculously short in terms of football dept experience to ensure long term success. And off field they are still rudderless in terms of what they want to be, where they want to get to and how they get there as a club long term.

When you look at the common threads, it’s poor decisions and direction by the senior leadership at the club over the last 15 years.

Forget bad luck with injuries, poor drafting, lack of development of players etc. It all stems from the leadership and direction from the top, and employing the right people in the right positions and enabling them. This hasn’t happened.
 
They just seem to be poorly coached, but when you look at their coaches it doesn't seem right... So perhaps they just have poor leadership, a poor culture and too many kids at once?
 
They have Aiden Corr, Luke McDonald and Zac Fisher playing in their back six ffs. Drop those guys into any team and watch them plummet
 
Rich01 said:
Good post.
When I look at it there’s several factors at play.

Once the club rejected the Gold Coast move they made plans to be Melbourne based but generate a revenue through selling games to the detriment of long term growth.

Then in 2016 they gutted the list and offloaded all leadership at the club. It was a Brad Scott call and once he realised the error of his ways he left with his reputation intact and the north list in disarray.

Roos coming in to provide guidance was a massive mistake, so too was appointing Shaw as coach without seriously advertising the position.

Then Hood has come in as president and while they landed their big fish in Clarko, they are ridiculously short in terms of football dept experience to ensure long term success. And off field they are still rudderless in terms of what they want to be, where they want to get to and how they get there as a club long term.

When you look at the common threads, it’s poor decisions and direction by the senior leadership at the club over the last 15 years.

Forget bad luck with injuries, poor drafting, lack of development of players etc. It all stems from the leadership and direction from the top, and employing the right people in the right positions and enabling them. This hasn’t happened.
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Sure. The bad luck is the gap between being a bad side and one of the worst ever. Just having a fit Ben Cunnington (who would probably be finishing up about now or maybe last year) would've made a massive difference. We were decent in 2021 when he was playing, absolutely diabolical in 2022 when he wasn't.
 
Yes they are.
The AFL president and Board need to show the roos how chase tackle and find the lead.
 

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Liam Boy said:
Sure. The bad luck is the gap between being a bad side and one of the worst ever. Just having a fit Ben Cunnington (who would probably be finishing up about now or maybe last year) would've made a massive difference. We were decent in 2021 when he was playing, absolutely diabolical in 2022 when he wasn't.
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Injuries and hard luck play a part for all teams.

Getting the right recruitment and development into the youngsters would have more of an impact than Ben playing games between 2022-24.

And bemoaning Riley Sanders is another thing. The club claimed to be super keen and invested in him in his draft year, yet overlooked him twice in that draft for who they believed were better players. Time will tell if it’s the right call, but whinging about not getting him as part of some sort of additional compo takes the focus off where the club had control in their decision making.
 
Obeanie1 said:
Well the current reigning premier gets priority access to players every year don't they?

Whilst also recently landing two top class father son mids plus Fletcher cheap.

PLUS access to free agents.

At the same time whilst winning flags and playing in grand finals.

Those are all AFL policies being applied.

AFL policies that are allowing the best teams to keep getting better at the expense of teams not travelling well at all.

The AFL needs to back off assisting the top teams getting better with policies that are creating an unequal playing field.

Why the hell should the premier be getting any assistance at all?
Click to expand...

This is very true and makes it a much longer process for teams that fall to the bottom. However Hawthorn have shown that you can improve relatively quickly in these same drafts even without access to academy/father sons, and they also haven't had anywhere near the access to the top of the draft that North have had.
 
Obeanie1 said:
Well the current reigning premier gets priority access to players every year don't they?

Whilst also recently landing two top class father son mids plus Fletcher cheap.

PLUS access to free agents.

At the same time whilst winning flags and playing in grand finals.

Those are all AFL policies being applied.

AFL policies that are allowing the best teams to keep getting better at the expense of teams not travelling well at all.

The AFL needs to back off assisting the top teams getting better with policies that are creating an unequal playing field.

Why the hell should the premier be getting any assistance at all?
Click to expand...

well those policies apply to teams not winning flags as well, except NGA which is bit of a rort.
 
cybercrab said:
In my opinion the AFL wont allow North to succeed, what do you think?
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That's a bold take—and one a few frustrated North Melbourne fans might quietly agree with. There's definitely been a narrative over the years that the AFL has its "favourites" or leans heavily toward clubs with big memberships, prime-time ratings, and powerhouse histories.

If we look at how the AFL has intervened or supported teams, it's clear they've gone to big lengths to help some (Gold Coast and GWS got heaps of draft concessions), while others—like North—often seem to be stuck in this weird limbo. Not bad enough for dramatic assistance, but not strong enough to break through either.

There’s also been those moments where North was pressured to move (hello, Gold Coast relocation talks), and some reckon that shows the AFL’s preference to reshape the league rather than let clubs like North grow naturally.
 

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Analysis Is the AFL responsible for North Melbourne's poor performance?

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