AFL Brisbane v North Melbourne 2022: Roos CEO Ben Amarfio says the club is committed to staying the course and developing its young talent
North Melbourne’s senior and VFL teams were both beaten by more than 100 points over the weekend. But CEO Ben Amarfio has reaffirmed the club’s long-term plan.
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North Melbourne chief executive Ben Amarfio says the club is committed to staying the course and developing its young talent despite an early-season “bumpy ride”.
Coach David Noble’s Roos are 1-2 but were battered by Brisbane on a weekend that both its senior and VFL teams lost by more than 100 points.
The Lions completely outclassed a North Melbourne outfit that was missing midfielders Luke Davies-Uniacke (concussion), Tarryn Thomas (internal bruising) and Ben Cunnington (cancer recovery).
But Amarfio said the club was unflinching in its planning about a bright future.
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“We knew when we embarked upon this strategy it would take some time and there would be some pain,” he said.
“We all went in with eyes wide open that at times it would be a bumpy ride and wouldn’t be a smooth journey.
“There was a lot of growth in the back half of last year and the expectation was we would just carry on from there but life and the universe doesn’t work like that.
“We are not getting spooked. We know what we have signed up for. It doesn’t mean we won’t challenge ourselves and question what we are doing.
“We question if what we are doing is enough, we constantly tinker, we constantly try to make our messaging simpler and the roles easier to understand.
“We just need to keep getting games into our kids. Their growth will come. We just have to be patient.”
Cunnington is not expected back until the last third of the season — if at all — as he recovers from testicular cancer, while Jed Anderson continues to build match fitness after a late start to the season.
Adding to the selection dilemma, high-priced recruit Callum Coleman-Jones managed just nine possessions and kicked a point at VFL level, while Flynn Perez amassed 21 possessions and Jacob Edwards kicked 1.1.
Noble agreed the AFL loss was embarrassing, while club legend Wayne Carey said the club was light years from being competitive.
“I think the coaches are putting a high demand on what we require and we need our players to toe the line,” Noble said.
“If you don’t bring your energy, you get that result. We have got to go back and have a bloody good look at ourselves. That’s the bottom line.”
‘That far off it’: Mystified Carey lashes embarrassing Roos
North Melbourne great Wayne Carey has lashed Roos players for getting ahead of themselves after last week’s win over a “WAFL side” and questioned the club’s lack of progress this year.
The Roos have only a solitary win over Covid-ravaged West Coast from the first three rounds with few signs of progress in a 108-point loss coach David Noble labelled as “unacceptable”.
Noble has warned his side there will be “consequences” over skill errors so bad the Roos gave up 80 points from turnovers, with Sydney awaiting at the SCG then the Western Bulldogs and Geelong.
The greatest Roo in the club’s 97-year VFL-AFL history said he was mystified how the club’s strong momentum in the last half of 2021 had evaporated.
“Let’s be honest, they beat a WAFL team by 15 points last week, they sung the song like it was a Grand Final,” Carey told Triple M.
“Don’t get me wrong in the position they are in, it was the first win for a long time and they wanted to sing the song but they sung it like they had won a grand final.
“Under the circumstances and what West Coast had been put through that was over the top and it carried through to the weekend. They are that far off it, it’s not funny.
“I said last year they wouldn’t win a game and they finished off last year fairly strongly.
“I thought they were competitive, they never got flogged in the last 10 games apart from one game.
“Where have they gone? A whole summer, number one draft pick, other kids into the club, strength and fitness that’s built over five or six years. You should be on the improve and unfortunately that’s an absolute shellacking.”
Noble said the Roos hadn’t worked hard enough or executed basic AFL skills as the Lions annihilated his club in a rampaging last-term surge to blow the margin to three figures.
“Pretty embarrassing. It was pretty poor on our standards we’re trying to create,” he said.
“There’s got to be consequences around training, there’s got to be consequences around skill errors. I’m not happy.
“Today we got outworked. It’s pretty simple. The midfield got outworked, the defenders were poor, they let their man lead them to the ball and our forwards didn’t play in front.
“It was a really simple, basic game today that we let ourselves down enormously and yeah, we should be embarrassed.’’
Seething Noble promises there will be ‘consequences’ for Roos
—Greg Davis
Furious North Melbourne coach David Noble says the Kangaroos need to have a “bloody good look at ourselves” after an “unacceptable” 108-point loss to Brisbane at the Gabba on Saturday night.
Noble said there would be “consequences” after the Kangaroos were smashed, bashed and lashed by the rampaging Lions with North Melbourne now licking their considerable wounds ahead of their Round 4 clash with Sydney.
He did not hold back in his post-match press conference, taking aim at the Kangaroos players who were simply blown off the Gabba by the undefeated and unrelenting Lions.
“Pretty embarrassing. It was pretty poor on our standards we’re trying to create.
There’s got to be consequences around training, there’s got to be consequences around skill errors. Close to 80 points on turnovers is just unacceptable … so no, I’m not happy,’’ Noble said.
“Today we got outworked. It’s pretty simple. The midfield got outworked, the defenders were poor, they let their man lead them to the ball and our forwards didn’t play in front.
“It was a really simple, basic game today that we let ourselves down enormously and yeah, we should be embarrassed.’’
Noble said the Kangaroos managed to bounce back from a poor start in 2021 to be competitive in the back half of the season and the road to redemption this year would start on the training paddock.
“We’ve got to train hard, we’ve got to get our standards right. The players have got to drive accountability for that. I think the coaches are putting a high demand on what we require and we need the players to toe the line,’’ he said.
“We need them to get on board with the level of intent we want to train at and want to play at. If you don’t bring your energy, you get that result.
“We thought and we felt we’d had enough of that experience last year to not dip into that position again and disappointing we did today.
“Our club’s been beaten by 200 points today — the state league game was exactly the same (Brisbane beat North Melbourne by 104 points in the VFL). We’ve got to go back and have a bloody good look at ourselves. That’s the bottom line.
“We know how to work our way out of this. We’ve done it before. We didn’t think we’d have to go there again but we know what we need to do.”
Meanwhile, Brisbane senior coach Chris Fagan said the Lions would not “carry on” about the win with the round 4 clash with Geelong on Friday night looming large.
North Melbourne beat Brisbane in the clearances and Fagan said the Lions could ill-afford that against the Cats.
“It’s actually really clear (what we can improve on) … we lost clearances tonight by seven and that’s a critical area against Geelong,’’ he said.
“So, we’ve got to be better in that department for sure. When you play them at their ground, they are very hard to beat down there so we are going to have to play really well.
“We are up for it but we are going to have to play well. It’s a vastly different task to the one we had tonight.’’
“The main thing for our team is we can’t get carried away by tonight because we are fronting up against Geelong next week and they are damn good.
“We have to make sure we don’t carry on too much about it. Tough road trip, doesn’t get any tougher.’’
Fagan called on his players to be relentless in the last quarter and they delivered by kicking nine goals to one to surge to the biggest win in his tenure as Lions boss.
“To kick 9.5 in the last quarter was probably beyond my expectations. I said to them at three-quarter time, we’ve got a choice to make now, we can just let the game peter out or we can press home the advantage,’’ he said.
“They made a great choice. Its juts a reflection of our players and particularly our leaders.”
Training drill: Roos humiliated in Gabba horror show
A brutal Brisbane claimed their biggest win under senior coach Chris Fagan as they bared their teeth and blew North Melbourne off the Gabba in a dominant 108-point thrashing of the Kangaroos on Saturday night.
The previous biggest win during Fagan’s tenure was the 91-point win over Gold Coast in Round 21, 2019 and the final tally of 156 points is the biggest score kicked this season.
It was like a training drill as the relentless Lions kicked the first four goals of the game and the last three majors of the first term to open a commanding 30-point buffer by quarter time.
By midway through the second term, they were up by 55 points. The last term was an annihilation as Brisbane kicked nine goals to one. It was a procession.
The dye was cast early when Joe Daniher when swung around on his left foot from 60 metres out and sent the Sherrin soaring through the goals inside the first 45 seconds. Eight minutes later, Brisbane had four goals on the board.
Midfielder Zac Bailey tore the Kangas to shreds early with two goals, one goal assist, four contested possessions and three inside 50 entries in his six touches in the first term.
The Lions were lining up all night. Linc McCarthy had four goals by halftime and had a career-high five by full-time while Charlie Cameron could have had significantly more than his two-goal return had he kicked straight after dominating the air in the forward line.
Apart from some very brief periods of resistance from the Kangaroos, Brisbane marched relentlessly to a 3-0 record to start the season with Dayne Zorko, Hugh McCluggage, Daniel Rich, Harris Andrews, Brandon Starcevich, Marcus Adams, Jarryd Lyons, Bailey and McCarthy just some of the best among a complete team performance.
The only concern for Brisbane was when Lachie Neale went down at a centre bounce and hobbled off the field. He had his ankle heavily strapped and eventually returned to the action.
Jy Simpkin was the best for North Melbourne with 31 touches. Ben McKay left the ground in the last term after a heavy clash with teammate Josh Walker.
The Kangaroos were simply outclassed and outgunned as the Grand Canyon-wide gap between a top four side and a bottom four side was laid bare.
Raise the bat Callum Ah Chee ðŸ#YokayiFooty | #AFLLionsNorthpic.twitter.com/rvtd1XXOkI
— AFL (@AFL) April 2, 2022
BERRY BRAIN-FADE
Brisbane midfielder Jarrod Berry could be in hot water with the MRO after an incident in the second quarter. Berry’s swinging right arm appeared to make contact with Nick Larkey’s stomach and umpire “Razor” Ray Chamberlain was on the spot to award the free kick and take Berry’s number. An ill-disciplined Brisbane then gave away a 50m penalty to hand the goal to the Kangaroos on a silver platter. It halted Brisbane’s ominous momentum and allowed North to briefly stem the flow. Earlier in the night, Chamberlain awarded a free kick to North Melbourne when he was roughly 70 metres from the contest with his two umpiring colleagues closer to the action, earning the ire of the Gabba faithful.
STARC’S HALF-CENTURY
Lions defender Brandon Starcevich played his 50th senior match and has assembled a fair body of work in his half century. Starcevich was in the All-Australian conversation in 2021 after shutting down a host of the competition’s best small forwards. He has quickly become a very important member of the Brisbane backline and did a fine job on Cameron Zurhaar on Saturday.
RIP RED OG MURPHY
North Melbourne players and staff wore black armbands after the shock news that former Kangaroo Red Og Murphy, 21, passed away in Ireland. Murphy was on the North Melbourne list in 2019 after being recruited as a Category B rookie. He played 12 games in the VFL in 2019 before returning home to Ireland to play Gaelic football for County Sligo.
FORT KNOCKS
Ruckman are often maligned for their lack of finesse but Lions big man Darcy Fort produced a lovely deft touch for a goal assist for Jarryd Lyons. Fort tapped the loose bouncing ball perfectly in the path of Lyons who was flying past the contest and towards the goal in the first half when Brisbane was piling the pain on the Kangaroos.
SCOREBOARD
LIONS: 7.2 11.6 14.13 23.18 (156)
KANGAROOS: 2.2 5.3 6.5 7.6 (48)
GOALS
LIONS: McCarthy 5, Bailey 4, Daniher 3, Cameron 2, Lyons 2, McStay 2, Robinson, Fort, Cockatoo, McInerney, Ah Chee.
ROOS: Larkey 2, Hall, Powell, Taylor, Goldstein, Polec
BEST
LIONS: Zorko, McCluggage, McCarthy, Lyons, Andrews, Rich, Starcevich, Adams
ROOS: Simpkin, Horne-Francis, Greenwood, Taylor, Goldstein, Xerri
INJURIES
LIONS
ROOS: Ben McKay (corked thigh)
VOTES
3: Dayne Zorko
2: Hugh McCluggage
1: Linc McCarthy
Pride of the Lions: The real Chris Fagan
— Jon Ralph
When Brisbane welfare manager Andrew Crowell’s car broke down recently a photo of him roadside waiting for a tow truck quickly flashed around a club WhatsApp group.
The next morning Brisbane Chris Fagan walked into his office with a solution for the busy father-of-four.
“Fages came into the office and said, ‘What happened to you’,” former Adelaide Crow Crowell recalled this week.
“I said my car broke down and the worst part is it’s getting fixed and it’s not back for a week. He said, ‘Ursula is away, I can use her car, so just take mine’.
“He came to my place, picked me up and drove me over to his place and then away he went.
“It was one of those things he didn’t have to do but he saw I was in a bit of strife.
“I have got four kids and he’s got the Hyundai Santa Fe, which is a fair bit nicer than the car I have got.
“He just wanted to help me out and it’s the kind of thing we pride ourselves on at this club. If someone is in need of help, you go out of your way to put your hand up.”
Not too many AFL coaches would trade in their fancy cars for a day let alone a week, and yet Fagan is not like most AFL coaches.
Six years and 107 games into the only senior coaching stint he ever wanted to have, he has developed one of the best one-on-one relationship models that Lions football boss Danny Daly has ever seen in football.
And if 60-year-old Fagan was once chipped for prioritising other strengths over the Xs and Os seen as necessary fundamentals, the Lions’ set up allows him to delegate some of the football specifics.
He does this while still retaining a strong hold on the kind of tactical tweaks that include changing the 2022 midfield mix as well as constantly rehearsing the kind of last-minute plays so crucial in big finals.
“I can’t talk for what other coaches do, but there have been plenty of coaches around who in the first couple of years try to be what Fages is with his relationships but if the pressure is on you it can change pretty quickly,” says former assistant Daly, elevated into the head of football role when David Noble joined North Melbourne.
“For one-on-one relationships he is probably the best I have ever seen with his empathy for people.
“He gives advice and he will also give a whack, but when he does it people know it comes from a good place.”
Former musician Crowell and Fagan have shared some special moments, including recording an epic Carpool Karaoke video during Covid that included strong early work on Crowded House’s ‘Better to Be Home Soon’, but what was let down when they forgot the words for Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys are Back in Town’.
3 men + a weekend of travel = carpool karaoke 🎶 😂
— Brisbane Lions (@brisbanelions) December 15, 2017
Watch the full Draft Day feature: https://t.co/aC0ZbFeNyapic.twitter.com/QFqYxdvNJI
Fagan prefers a different approach when connecting with his players.
He often checks in with them while walking on the open road — Daly was unable to confirm the rumour he punches out 100km a week.
“He makes an effort to call all the boys,” says All Australian Daniel Rich.
“He is a massive walker, you can hear him kind of puffing along on the phone and having a chat to you. I am No. 10 so I know I am tenth off the bat, so I would hate to be No. 44.
“I just love how genuine he is and how much he cares for you as a person.
“He understands we are humans and if he can sort through that the rest takes care of itself. He puts a lot of trust and faith into his assistants to work on that footy side of it.
“And he oversees and does a lot of work with the coaches behind closed doors.
“He has a very good footy brain and he’s very passionate about the team playing well but empowering the assistants (Mark Stone, Murray Davis, Ben Hudson, Jed Adcock) is so important and he backs them in to get the work done.”
Keen to impress the coach in his early months, Daly stuck his hand up for one of those legendary walks but given the hot pace a group of eight dwindled to two by the 15km mark.
Each week he and Fagan plot the destruction of an upcoming rival using Fagan’s back catalogue.
“I think it was the third time I had been to his place on a Wednesday he put on the vinyl records,” Daly said.
“There is some pretty good stuff but also some pretty average stuff so that became a thing whenever I went there.
“He ended up getting all these vinyls sent to him so he went from a beer crate full (of records) to three or four of them — Skyhooks, Billy Joel, The Beatles.”
Wife Ursula is a rock of support but also doesn’t sugar-coat her advice when it’s needed.
“The one thing I love about Ursula is that she tells it how it is,” Daly said.
“She doesn’t pat him on the back, she lets him know when he is going above what he should be as a coach and if he’s cranky she will bring him back to work. She is a beauty.
“She has given up a fair bit. She was a teacher and they have two girls in Melbourne but she is a great support and keeps him on the straight and narrow.”
So despite all the dodgy musical choices and forgotten song lyrics, or perhaps because of them, Fagan has created an environment in which the only thing missing is the ultimate success.
“You see his passion on the bench and how much people mean to him,” Daly said.
“He is one of those coaches who would never coach anywhere. This is it.
“People like just turning up to the joint. They come in and leave as better people. Either you are on board or you are not, and almost everyone is on board.”
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