Demons hammer hapless North Melbourne

Demons coach Simon Goodwin has praised his side’s defensive pressure and superior fitness after their 57-point thrashing of North Melbourne.

Melbourne's Christian Petracca tries to control the ball under attention from North Melbourne's Luke McDonald at Adelaide Oval. Picture: Sarah Reed

Demons coach Simon Goodwin has praised his side’s defensive pressure and superior fitness after their 57-point thrashing of North Melbourne at Adelaide Oval.

Melbourne turned a 16-point lead at three-quarter time into a veritable walk-in-the-park, as the Kangaroos seemed to put up the white flag.

North had control early and were leading at quarter-time, but you can never judge a game by its first stanza and the Demons wrestled back control.

“We’ve been really calm as a footy department around what our footy was looking like,” Goodwin said.

“We are starting to get those results now. We defended really strongly again and we’re becoming a really hard team to play against defensively and that’s what’s pleasing us most.

A lot of our attack is built off the back of good defence and good contest stoppage work and we think our game’s coming together nicely.”

Melbourne rested captain Max Gawn (shoulder/back) and were without vice Jack Viney (concussion), so Jake Melksham stepped up and his third-quarter goal was good reward.

But it was Angus Brayshaw (29 touches), Clayton Oliver (31) and Christian Petracca (29 – and goal of the night) who were the matchwinners.

For the Roos, Luke McDonald’s 33 disposals were important as were Nick Larkey’s four goals, but all in all, North put on a poor display and slumped to their eighth loss of the season.

“Not good enough” was how a visibly disappointed Rhyce Shaw summed up his side’s thrashing at the hands of Melbourne.

The North Melbourne coach said after executing the game plan well in the first quarter and having a 10-point quarter-time buffer over the Demons, his side “decided to go a different path” and the game ended with his team playing a brand of footy that was “not up to standard”.

“Our display tonight for the majority of the game wasn’t acceptable, it wasn’t up to standard or befitting of our football club,” he said.

“I think we’re at a point now where this is unacceptable and it’s not the way that we want to play our football and for our members and fans they need to hear that and the reality is that we’re not good enough at the moment.”

With six games left in the season, Shaw said he would find out a lot about his players and his list.

“Where at that stage I think now where that’s just the reality of it, I don’t think I’m saying anything that’s going to be a shock to anyone now.

“But in saying that, I don’t give up. That’s not me, that’s not this football club and it’s not what we’re about.

“We’ll look to produce good football over this period of time, but we’ll certainly find out about a few players.”

The Kangaroos were hampered by injury during the Sunday game at Adelaide Oval: Jed Anderson copped a poke to the eye, Josh Walker had a corked thigh, Robbie Tarrant had a cork in his calf as did Majak Daw and Aiden Bonar had an AC injury in his shoulder.

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Goodwin said it was the players’ fitness – born from a tough pre-season – that explained his side’s past two games where they have blown their opposition out of the game in the final term (to beat the Crows by 51 points and back it up four days later against the Kangaroos).

“It’s a great position to be in,” Goodwin said.

“The guys did a power of work in the summer to put themselves in this position and… we’re healthy and we get a chance to maximise that through this period.

“It’s a compressed part of the year, where we’re going to need a lot of players to play for our footy club … the way we’re running out games is a credit to the work the players have done through the summer and through the period of COVID where we didn’t play footy, they continued to make sure they enhanced their games in that phase.

“We’re getting the rewards on the back of that.”

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