Pure Footy: Stats men David King, Daniel Hoyne lift lid on AFL trends after round 12

North Melbourne’s woes have experts searching the record books – and scratching their heads over one perplexing tactic. Watch a new episode of Pure Footy.

North Melbourne recorded its 10th straight loss on Saturday, and the bad news is the Kangaroos are getting worse.

The Roos played one of the worst quarters in recent memory against Gold Coast, when they were outscored 7.7 to 0.0 in the second term after taking a 17-point lead into quarter-time.

North Melbourne’s inside-50 differential this season is the second-worst since Champion Data started keeping stats in 1999 – behind only GWS in its first season in 2012.

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But it was another stat that had Champion Data analyst Daniel Hoyne shaking his head.

“It is really hand to understand why they are trying to play the way they have been playing,” he said on Pure Footy, the weekly AFL analysis show exclusive to heraldsun.com.au.

“Their ability to be able to turn the ball over when existing their defensive half is the reason why they are producing territory numbers that we’ve very rarely seen.

“They are minus 260 inside-50s in the past 10 weeks – that just doesn’t make you competitive.

It’s tough playing for North Melbourne this season. Picture: Graham Denholm/Getty Images

“Gold Coast had 29 inside-50s in the second quarter, which is the equal-most ever in a quarter by any team, but I don’t think North Melbourne ever changed their method in how they were coming out of their defensive half.

“When they had the ball in their back half, either from a free kick or a mark, where you’ve got the ability to switch the ball to the other side – they had 27 opportunities to try to take the ball to the other side of the ground and try to exit a different way ... they didn’t switch it once.

“I just thought it was questionable as to why not once did you try to take the ball and see what results you could possibly get, because what was happening was clearly not working.”

Also on this week’s episode, Melbourne’s worrying six-week trend, why Collingwood is winning – and is so good to watch –the one area Fremantle has to fix, and the highest impact players in the competition over the first 12 rounds.