Garry Lyon: North Melbourne must win Good Friday clash with Carlton to become relevant again
North Melbourne is an irrelevant football club whose supporters are sick of waiting for the worm to turn. Garry Lyon is staking a line in the sand over Good Friday, asking if not now, then when?
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North Melbourne last played finals football in 2016. Since then the Kangaroos have been an irrelevant football club.
Harsh? Yes, and there is no joy in writing it.
But the evidence is irrefutable — 15th, 9th and 12th in the ensuing years is not great, but irrelevant?
How about 17th, 18th, 18th, 17th and 17th in the past five years with a grand total of 15 wins and 91 losses. And right now they have one win from five games, with the victory coming against a winless Melbourne.
They have bemoaned the fact that they don’t get free-to-air television exposure, that the marquee slots of Thursday and Friday nights that commercial partners crave are a rarity and that they are stuck in the middle of a vicious football cycle.
They are told these opportunities are the primary domain of the big clubs, yet how do they become a big club, if they’re not afforded those opportunities?
Which brings us to the annual Good Friday clash.
North Melbourne campaigned hard for the right to play, supplemented the request with fantastic support of the Royal Children’s Hospital Appeal and were, rightly, granted their wish by the AFL.
They have won one game and lost six, with an average losing margin of 56 points. There’s plenty of exposure with the Good Friday match. Careful what you wish for.
What abject mediocrity brings with it, by virtue of the AFL’s equalisation policies, is access to the best young talent in the competition.
To that end, the Roos ar well equipped, talent wise, coming in to this Good Friday clash against Carlton — as they have been for a very long time.
They have one of the greatest coaches the game has ever produced at the helm, they are blessed with a home training base that their premiership-winning brethren of the 90s could only fantasise about and a solid and stable administration working hard to provide the club with every opportunity to compete with their more powerful rivals.
Put simply, if not now, when? When is this football club going to demonstrate that they are sick and tired of being dismissed by Round 7 or 8 each year, and are an opponent, not feared, but coveted as a double-up match up to fatten percentage or enhance Coleman Medal chances? Every club confronts a game, early in a season, that can dictate the trajectory of their season.
Port Adelaide stared down a potential mini disaster last Sunday night against Hawthorn, a hyped, stand-alone encounter that no player could hide from. And from subsequent reports, Ken Hinkley, as has been his style, embraced the emotion and harnessed it to the point that they simply obliterated the premiership favourite in the space of 25 minutes of football. Pride, for now, restored.
This is North Melbourne’s moment. Carlton is a side with lofty ambitions, but reality has not met expectations. The Blues are vulnerable.
In another era, at another club, this is an environment that Alistair Clarkson longed for.
He wanted the pressure, he thrived on the pressure, he coveted the pressure. It’s when your most acute learnings take place and your most dramatic growth can occur. This is what lies ahead for these North Melbourne players. If they are ready to embrace the emotional and physical turmoil that is inherent with all successful sides.
This group have to decide if they have arrived at that place yet. Because losing can become easy. Be competitive for part of a game, maybe kick four or five in a row, maybe even hit the front for a short period of time. Then get run over the top of by a more fancied opponent, look disappointed for a few minutes post-game, walk slowly off the ground and convince yourself that you had a go and were competitive for a while against a strong opponent.
And before you know it you’re one win and eight losses and another season, filled with so much hope and expectation, is nothing but bluster and disappointment.
Or, you do something about it.
Publicly, there is a measured narrative being sold. Patience, inconsistency of youth, small wins, comparative rebuilds.
Privately, I hope they are embracing all that comes with the challenge — that they understand every eyeball is on them, that their record on this day has been deplorable and they need to erase that embarrassment. They need to be aware that there coach has put his legacy, to a degree, back in their hands by returning to his original home and that at some stage in your rebuild you need to kick off the training wheels and play without the safety net.
The North faithful may not be the largest, but they are as loyal and protective of their beloved shinboners as any. Surely they have endured enough. They have been patient and the broader football community understanding. But the patience and the understanding has just about worn out.
Simpkin, Davies-Uniacke, Larkey, Sheezel, Powell, Curtis, Wardlaw, McKercher, Duursma, Comben, Zurhaar, Logue. Throw in babies, O’Sullivan and Whitlock and veterans Parker and Darling. There’s enough there, or you wouldn’t write this article, you’d just bemoan the sorry state of a club that cant get out of their own way.
That’s the emotional challenge laid out. Pride and passion and care and effort and competitiveness. Old school? Maybe, but you don’t win without it.
By the numbers there some obvious strengths and weaknesses.
They have improved their percentage from 63.5. last year to 80 this year, which is a five-year high.
They’ve gone from 16th for points scored to 11th, 18th for scores per inside 50 to fifth.
Their rate of moving the footy from defensive 50 to inside-50 has improved from 18th to 10th and the contested possession differential has risen from 16th to 10th.
The ball movement numbers and scoring once inside 50 are really encouraging.
The big issue remains around their defence.
North Melbourne still ranks 16th for points against, 15th for points against per inside 50, 16th for points against from turnover and 17th for stopping their opposition moving the ball from defensive 50 to inside 50.
None of that is demonstrably better than it has been for the last three years.
Some of that goes to personnel, with Aidan Corr trying to punch above his weight for much of that period while others were absent from injury.
With Griffen Louge back and the development of Charlie Comben, they will hope these numbers improve.
Clarkson famously redefined how teams defended when he took zone defending to a whole new level.
The challenge for him, right now, is tighten this defence.
Has his style evolved enough in recent times? Is the system he is coaching resonating with the group? Or is just a matter of repeat, repeat, repeat until they get it right?
There is no question the Kangaroos are on the clock. To what degree is arguable, but it cannot lead to a facsimile of the past five years.
If it turns out to, finally, be a Good Friday for the Kangaroos, then the path back to relevance becomes clearer.
Originally published as Garry Lyon: North Melbourne must win Good Friday clash with Carlton to become relevant again
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