How North Melbourne remade its football department to get the most out of latest rebuild
Having scooped up future stars across two of the most important drafts in club history, North Melbourne has turned its attention to making those players better. This is how the Roos have done it.
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As they cleared out their lockers in October, the 13 players leaving North Melbourne took 1463 games of experience with them.
And probably even more departed when Alastair Clarkson and Todd Viney decided to move the coaching group down an age bracket.
As they face a task of nurturing possibly the two most important drafts in the club’s history, the men in charge of football at Arden Street remade their department and pushed it to be younger.
Turning the four top-four picks they snared in the last two years – Harry Sheezel, George Wardlaw, Colby McKercher and Zane Duursma – from star pupils to dominant men is the most important task on the agenda for North Melbourne.
Whether the football department flip around works could be the difference between the Kangaroos exiting a painful slump that has seen them win just 12 games since Covid started, or getting stuck on the hamster wheel of never-ending rebuilds.
It’s clear to any football fan scanning through the North Melbourne list – the youngest in the AFL – that the focus should be on making those young players better.
It’s a track that footy boss Viney was happy to put the Roos on as he remodelled the football department and created virtually a new development team led by Michael Barlow.
“The demographic of the group was getting a lot younger and the statistics would say we are the youngest list in the AFL with the least amount of games experience so we really needed to have a look at the dynamics of the whole football department,” he said.
“Perhaps Clarko is a more senior coach now and I am in that same bracket and we had some other guys who were part of the coaching group who were the same vintage and we would need to perhaps look at the age demographic of our coaches and if we were still relating with the group.”
From that vintage, assistants from last year Brett Ratten and John Blakey left, along with longtime development lead Gavin Brown.
In coaching terms, that was decades of knowledge and a heck of a lot of experience.
Jordan Russell rebuffed a plan from the Roos to move into development and landed an assistant role at Carlton, and part-timer Josh Gibson was shed.
Brent Harvey stepped from a coaching role to a part-time gig working with past players.
Xavier Clarke, a highly regarded assistant who was in the hunt for Richmond’s top coaching job last year, and the well-respected Jed Adcock were lured to Arden Street.
And Barlow now leads a group of full-time development staff – AFLW champion Emma Kearney, VFL journeyman Adam Marcon and 29-year-old former Power and Saint player Jarrod Lienert – and works side-by-side with VFL coach Tom Lynch.
Maybe the smallest call at North Melbourne made this off-season was removing bacon and eggs from the morning menu, something that spearhead Nick Larkey bemoaned this week.
Maybe the biggest call was not getting a senior assistant to sit alongside head coach Clarkson, and instead invest at the other end of the coaching tree.
With young jets punctuating the Roos list, Essendon great Matthew Lloyd declared last year the Roos need “the best off-field support staff of all time”.
The Roos had the fifth youngest list in the league last year before the likes of Ben Cunnington, Todd Goldstein, Jack Ziebell and Aaron Hall departed.
For Viney, improvement was in the numbers.
“It is just critical, we have got to look at ways of getting better,” he said.
“All players need to be developed but the way the list is so young, we have to make sure we have the numbers on the ground to be able to help work with them and put a development plan in place that can be executed, so we needed more numbers in the development space.
“Overall now there is a philosophy of making sure every player is being developed.”
THE NEW DEVELOPERS
Barlow came from coaching a Werribee VFL grand final appearance with a strong endorsement from Mark Williams.
And ‘Choco’ knows the game, with Viney describing the now Melbourne coaching sage as “probably one of the best development coaches of all time”.
Barlow’s team has immediately closed the age gap but there is still a way to go to catch up to the TikTok teens.
“What I am feeling at the moment, probably from the players coming in this season, you are feeling like there is nearly one or two generations removed from what I am to the guys coming through now,” Barlow said.
“The world is moving very quickly and I think the main brief we were given on the way in is this group needs some energy and some enthusiasm. We are pretty lucky to have that and with the coaching group we have, we have forgone that one more senior coach and put a bit emphasis on development.”
Each development coach works with their respective assistant line coach to keep the message consistent.
As with every club, each player on the list has their own plan on getting better, from triple-premiership winner Liam Shiels to one-gamer McKercher.
“Nick Larkey is a player that we are looking to draw out incremental improvements and players in their first-to-four year group, we are looking for 10-20 per cent improvements across the board,” Barlow said.
“We know that can add up to something pretty special if you get it all right and swinging in the right direction.”
Barlow said the varying journeys of the development team, from state leaguers who had to fight for an AFL chance to Kearney’s remarkable eight all-Australian nods, connected with players.
No. 2 pick McKercher agreed.
“I think first of all those people you are talking about are just really good people,” he said.
“They are really good support to lean on during a pretty tough pre-season and I guess a time when we are going through a lot of things and getting so much information and adapting to a new lifestyle.”
North Melbourne will not know whether the beefing up of its younger coaches actually put its players on a path to greatness but the buy in has come from the top to the bottom.
“The connection between line coach and development coach has been great, Clarko has been willing to allow us to do our thing and it is a pretty exciting part of the year,” Barlow said.
“Hopefully we will go well but we are well aware there is possibility for some challenging times as well.”
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