2024 AFL Season Previews: North Melbourne
Can North Melbourne finally start moving in the right direction?
After years of turmoil, 2024 looks like Year Zero at Arden Street.
2023 ladder position: 17th (3 wins, 20 losses)
2023 best-and-fairest: Harry Sheezel
Senior coach: Alastair Clarkson
Story of the season
Despair, mostly – with some optimism at either end. North appointed Alastair Clarkson, proceeded to win their first two games, then lost 20 in a row, before signing off with a win against a Gold Coast side whose players were there in body but not application. Along the way, Clarkson stepped down for mental health reasons for three months, Brett Ratten performed admirably as caretaker coach, and North unearthed some gems. Harry Sheezel won the Rising Star award, Nick Larkey finished third in the Coleman Medal and made the All-Australian team, and George Wardlaw announced himself as a star of the future. After the season ended, North made themselves the centre of attention by having five picks in the first round of the 2023 National Draft. Change is seemingly the only constant at Arden Street.
Summary of game style
Because of the instability of the past few years, and the disruption created by Alastair Clarkson’s decision to temporarily step aside, North have been caught in an unhappy holding pattern of “rebuilding without building”. Talented young players have been improving on an individual basis, but they’ve not had the opportunity to improve by playing within a coherent system that maximises and develops their strengths.
Consulting statistics isn’t much help when it comes to understanding how weaker teams like to play, because they tend to get smashed in the metrics that matter. So what do we know – or at least think we know – about how North will play under Clarkson? The changes to how they want to play without the ball were obvious in the first two rounds of the season: a much higher set defensive position, and more vigorous attempts to apply pressure and force turnovers up the field.
It was harder to discern what Clarkson wants North to do with the ball. That’s understandable – it takes more time and talent to develop attacking patterns than it does drilling a defence. Early on, it was mostly straight lines and slow movement – a common tendency of weaker and younger sides often borne of a psychological aversion to making errors that lead to turnover.
It really took until Clarkson’s comeback game, against Melbourne in Round 21, to see the outline of how North wanted to attack: greater focus on spreading the opposition defence, more handballing out of pressure, and more care to find targets than just gain territory. In short, more of the components of a modern AFL offence. Statistically, the approach yielded some green shoots of progress. In the final five rounds of the season, North ranked third for goals per inside 50 entry.
It’s still (very) early days. But that early momentum seems to have carried over into North’s pre-season games. The excellent Ricky Mangidis, who’s forgotten more about North than I’ll ever know, wrote about what he saw. The game, and the hype it generated among North fans, has already spawned a new phrase: Northball. It’s all the kids (including George Wardlaw) are talking about.
Reality will be the ultimate judge, but both approaches make lots of sense because they make heavy use of North’s strongest line: their midfield. Defending higher up the field and moving the ball more aggressively means that North’s strongest line will be more heavily involved across all phases of play.
List changes
In:
Colby McKercher (2023 National Draft, pick #2)
Zane Duursma (2023 National Draft, pick #4)
Taylor Goad (2023 National Draft, pick #20)
Wil Dawson (2023 National Draft, pick #22)
Riley Hardeman (2023 National Draft, pick #23)
Finnbar Maley (2023 Rookie Draft, pick #2)
Dylan Stephens (traded from Sydney)
Zac Fisher (traded from Carlton)
Toby Pink (free agent)
Bigoa Nyuon (traded from Richmond)
Tyler Sellers (Supplemental Selection Period)
Out:
Ben McKay (traded to Essendon)
Todd Goldstein (free agent – Essendon)
Tarryn Thomas (sacked)
Aidan Bonar (delisted)
Jacob Edwards (delisted)
Jack Mahony (delisted)
Flynn Perez (delisted)
Phoenix Spicer (delisted)
Kayne Turner (delisted)
Lachie Young (delisted)
Jack Ziebell (retired)
Ben Cunnington (retired)
Aaron Hall (retired)
Daniel Howe (retired)
List profile
Number of top-10 draft picks: 11 (second-most)
Average age at Opening Round: 23.3 (youngest)
Average number of games played: 49.2 (fewest)
Every team at every time operates somewhere along the continuum of “Win Now” and “Win Tomorrow”. North are operating about as close to Win Tomorrow as possible. Following the departures of Todd Goldstein, Jack Ziebell and Ben Cunnington they’re now the youngest and – by a significant margin – the least experienced side in the AFL. They only have two players over 30. It wasn’t always like this. Former senior coach Brad Scott led a team of grizzled veterans to consecutive preliminary finals and multiple September appearances. Little by little, results declined – until they collapsed spectacularly in 2020. That season marked the first of four consecutive bottom-two finishes for the Shinboners, and the beginning of a full-scale rebuild which has involved trading or delisting underperforming older players and replacing them with progressively younger players.
There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to a rebuild. One is to start with key position players, who typically take longer to physically mature. The other strategy, which is the one North Melbourne have pursued, is to spend top draft picks on midfielders and acquire key position players by other means. North have so many exciting young mids that, assuming most develop as they’re expected to, they might have a hard time fielding them all. That’s exciting. But there are trade-offs. With the notable exception of Nick Larkey, they still lack experience and proven AFL quality in key positions. And with such a young list, there aren’t many wise old heads to help in tough moments. Then again, it’s not like the wise old heads were winning lots of games.
Line rankings
Defence: Poor
Midfield: Above Average
Forward: Average
Ruck: Average
The case for optimism
North Melbourne fans should be optimistic because [knock on wood] most of the nasty stuff should be behind them. The club has been through the wringer. Let’s take a brief, bleak stroll down memory lane, shall we? Rhyce Shaw stepped down for mental health reasons. His replacement, David Noble, showed modest signs of reviving the team’s performances before an alarming decline led to him being sacked with six weeks of the 2022 season remaining. The appointment of Clarkson, a four-time Premiership winning coach, was widely seen as a coup – but then he stepped aside less than halfway through last season. There’s been the saga of Tarryn Thomas, which only recently had its denouement. You just can’t realistically expect to have a successful rebuild under those circumstances.
2024 feels different. It feels like Year Zero. Clarkson has had a full pre-season with the team. Five first-round draft picks and a couple of canny defensive pick-ups make the list look both more exciting and more reliable than it has in some time. There’s evidence of a more modern, aggressive style (Northball!), and players capable of executing it. They will be better and more competitive.
Most football supporters aren’t so entitled that they expect a Premiership every year. Instead, they want to be entertained, to feel like part of a community, and to see a group of people they become attached to grow and develop together. North fans’ expectations have been modest. But even then, it’s been a long time since they’ve been fulfilled. Finally, it looks like they can look forward to a future that’s better than the recent past. The recent announcement that Harry Sheezel has extended his contract to the end of the decade is another data point which suggests North are beginning to turn the ship in the right direction.
The case for pessimism
It’ll still be a grind. North will still lose more games, probably many more games, than they win. This won’t surprise anyone with even the vaguest affiliation to the club. But there’ll still probably be days that test the patience of most and the loyalty of some.
A lot of leadership walked out the door after the end of last season. Between them, Todd Goldstein, Jack Ziebell and Ben McKay played 666 games for North Melbourne. And it’s not like they were bit-part contributors: all of them were locks for the first 22. Perhaps, given that just 250 of them were victories, that experience is overrated. But experience isn’t just valuable because it helps to generate wins in the short-term. Harnessed correctly, it improves the development of younger players.
Other circumstances have deprived North of players who made contributions last year. Griffin Logue immediately made a positive impact down back after making the switch from Fremantle. He’ll spend a fair chunk of the season recovering from the ACL injury he sustained against Geelong in Round 17. Then there’s Tarryn Thomas. I don’t care to comment on the situation beyond the fact that he was one of North’s better attacking midfielders, and he’s no longer an AFL player. Time will render its verdict on what it means for North’s immediate prospects on-field.
As alluded to above, North have chosen to build out from the midfield, which leaves big holes in their forward line and defence. That means that in games where North’s midfield is outmatched, things could get ugly simply because there they don’t have the crutch of an experienced defensive line. More than that: we don’t even really know what North’s defence will look like. Clarkson has been experimenting with different defensive combinations in pre-season. Most include Toby Pink. The linchpin of the dominant Glenelg side looks a good bet for a Round 1 debut. Beyond that, the picture loses definition. Charlie Comben has spent some time down back. Bigoa Nyuon, an off-season recruit from Richmond is staking his claim, as is 18 year-old Riley Hardeman. I’m confident Clarkson will eventually find the optimal combination, but the fact is that North will have a porous defensive line at least until Logue returns.
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Breakout player
This is a crowded field: North have 29 players on their list who’ve played 50 games or fewer. Some, like Harry Sheezel, have already met my criteria of breaking out. Others, like Charlie Lazzaro and Josh Goater, have shown some really nice things so far. But it’s hard to nominate anyone other than George Wardlaw. In 2023, he did one of the hardest things in football – play inside midfield right away. The last player I remember doing that and looking so at ease was Matt Rowell. A summer of adding size and craft will mean he’s even better in 2024.
Most important player
Six years into his career, Luke Davies-Uniacke has emerged as the undisputed leader of the North midfield and a genuine star of the competition. He’s just as valuable at the bottom of a stoppage as he is streaming out of it toward attacking 50. Forged by the adversity of one of the toughest periods of North’s history, he looks ready to lead a young group up the ladder.
Biggest question to answer
Can Clarkson successfully implement a new style? Teams with strong midfields can (big oversimplification here) choose the Carlton/Melbourne path of being solid and a little stodgy, or the Brisbane/Port path of dynamism and scoring. We only really have four games – five including the sim against Collingwood – of data to go on, but the early signs are that Clarkson is more interested in the latter.
What success looks like
North won’t play finals in 2024. Everyone knows that. So instead, the club’s goals are to create the foundations to play in and win them in the back half of the decade. Namely: further development of talented young players and evidence of a coherent attacking style. Both things should be made easier by something which has been a rare commodity at Arden Street over the last few years: stability. Hopefully, it’ll all result in a bit more cheer for the club’s loyal, long-suffering fans in 2024.
In a nutshell
North Melbourne still have far too many weaknesses to trouble the top eight. But, for the first time in a long time, they should have enough talent and structure to surprise some teams and excite their supporters.
Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against North? Share your thoughts in the comments.