In the hard-edge, sometimes cruel world of AFL football, David Noble always felt as if he had to do it the hard way.

Given his journey, it’s easy to understand why.

He didn’t get his AFL chance until he was 21, and when he was cut after two games, the fact he didn’t have a manager cost him a second chance.

LISTEN: Press play below to listen to the David Noble ‘Sacked’ podcast

Then just as he was climbing through the assistant coaching ranks, he was made redundant because his club at the time was in a cashflow crisis.

He was forced into a “fire sale” of his family home, leaving him and wife Sarah with no choice but to pack up their family and drive to Adelaide for a fresh start.

Through it all, he thrived in coaching, list manager and football administration roles at Adelaide for more than a decade before being poached by the lowly Brisbane Lions.

But just as the Lions were pivoting towards success, the lure of becoming North Melbourne’s senior coach proved too great.

He lasted only 38 games (for five wins and a draw) in the role before he took a phone call from Kangaroos president Sonja Hood that he knew would end in his sacking.

“I know I’m in trouble, what do you want to do?” Noble asked Hood.

As inevitable as the decision was, it still stung him.

“Unfortunately what tends to happen with all of these things is that life just moves on,” Noble told the Sacked podcast. “You feel like you’ve left the industry as a sacked coach.”

Two years on, the man who is now chief executive of Supercars powerhouse Dick Johnson Racing remains proud of what he achieved in his 30-plus years in the AFL.

He has reconciled with the cards dealt against him at North Melbourne and has accepted the mistakes he made in the process.

Asked how he had managed to fit so much into this career, Noble laughed: “I guess the wheel just keeps turning. You keep moving forward to your next task … it’s not until you look back in reflection that you go, ‘There’s a fair bit of ground covered there’.”

‘THE LATER THE PICK, THE GREATER THE CHARACTER’

The last pick in the NFL draft is referred to as “Mr Irrelevant”, but Noble says his list management discussions over the years convinced him “the later the pick, the greater the character”.

Noble was selected by Fitzroy at pick 111 in the 1989 AFL national draft. Only five selections came after him.

“When I was in list management I got overseas and went to a few teams and looked at how they did things in the NFL,” Noble said.

“They used to say, ‘The later the draft (pick), the stronger the character’. I’m going to stand by that because (pick) 111 means I’ve got a lot of character.”

He followed his father’s football footsteps at North Hobart and carved out a good career, including two TFL premierships, while he hankered for an AFL opportunity.

“I played against Matty Armstrong and ‘Lynchy’ (Alastair Lynch) … and a few of those guys went early (to the AFL), and I was thinking, ‘S***, surely I will get a chance,” he said.

Fittingly, he made his Fitzroy debut at his old home ground, North Hobart Oval, in round 6, 1991.

The Lions lost to Hawthorn by 157 points, and while he had 18 disposals he had to play on dual Norm Smith medallist Gary Ayres.

“It was an extremely proud moment to have the family there, playing on my old home ground,” Noble said.

He played for the Lions the next week, but never again.

“I did go and speak to ‘Shawry’ (Fitzroy coach Robert Shaw) at the end of the year and said I was going to go and do an improvement program … I’d got a speed coach,” he said.

“He pretty much said he didn’t think it would make any difference.”

A lifeline appeared at Sydney, but Noble was unaware he had to nominate for the draft.

When his name wasn’t called by the Swans, he thought, ‘Why the hell didn’t those blokes take me?’ Sydney rang to ask him why he didn’t nominate.

Noble’s AFL career froze on two games but his ambition didn’t …

TO THE DOGS

If you ask Noble which club was his favourite, his answer is almost always Upwey-Tecoma.

He led the club to premierships in the Yarra Valley Mountain Football League in 1993 and ’94. It fuelled his coaching passion.

After roles as an Oakleigh Chargers assistant and coach of the NSW-ACT Rams, he took a call from Western Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace in late 1997 that changed it all.

It was the start of a five-season stint at the Whitten Oval, which included a reserves premiership in 1998, and priceless coaching lessons under Wallace.

“He (Wallace) is the coach that I would go to … to make a move to win a game,” Noble said. “He had this unbelievable skill to be able to assess who needs to be where at a particular point in time.”

The round 20, 2000 “Flood Game” was a case in point as the Bulldogs squeezed the life out of Essendon, the Bombers’ only loss that season.

“We went down to Werribee, we marked out the field and the coaches all came in trench coats into the meeting,” Noble said. “We were going incognito to ambush this game.

“We had all the ground marked up in squares. He (Wallace) nailed the execution. We bowled them over comfortably in the end. It was a masterstroke.”

‘WE PRETTY MUCH LOST EVERYTHING’

In one of footy’s worst kept secrets, Wallace was courted by Sydney during the 2002 season.

He was under contract which complicated matters.

“I distinctly remember the awkward training session where ‘Plough’ announced he was going,” Noble said. “It was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had on the ground.

“Normally, everyone comes in and stands nearby and listens, but I reckon we had guys 30 metres away from Terry. All of these guys were awkwardly going, ‘What’s going on here?’

“Post that session, a number of the senior guys went in and said: ‘We can’t do this.’

Wallace was replaced by Peter Rohde but Paul Roos beat him to the Sydney job. Noble ended up getting “the arse”.

“‘Rohda’ … had the respect to meet with me eyeball to eyeball and say: ‘Our budget has been cut, I haven’t got a spot for you’.”

It couldn’t have come at a worse time as Noble had mortgaged himself to the hilt to buy a new family home.

“We were pretty much in debt up to our eyeballs,” he said.

“We pretty much lost everything. It was the end of 2002 … you could borrow as much as you possibly could from the bank.”

Telling his wife that he had not only lost his job, but they would have to sell their house was one of the toughest things he had to do.

“You’re the number one breadwinner and there’s a range of embarrassment and difficulty that comes with that conversation,” he said.

“All through my career, she’s been the rock behind our family. I had to sit there and say ‘Look, we have to find a job … we will have to put the house on the market’.

“We had to sort of fire sale the property to get ourselves out of debt. Well, we didn’t get out of debt, we just had to pick ourselves up and chuff off (to Adelaide) with three kids.”

‘I DIDN’T LIKE WHAT COACHING WAS TURNING ME INTO’

After two seasons coaching Glenelg (SANFL), he was poached by Adelaide’s Neil Craig.

Noble spent six seasons as an assistant coach and the Crows were so close to premiership success they could almost touch it.

But preliminary finals in 2005 and 2006 ended in disappointment.

“‘Craigy’ had a march over the whole competition … the way we trained, the way we used GPS, the whole sports science methodology of how we played,” Noble said.

“I think we just ran out of puff in ’05 … we probably trained a bit too hard towards the end. Maybe ’06 was the one that got away.”

Noble was looking for a change of role – for the sake of his family – at the end of 2010.

“I didn’t like what coaching was turning me into,” he said.

“I’d go home and have dinner, put the kids to bed, and pull up the computer. I was a non-present dad.

“I made a conscious decision that I didn’t want to be a part-time dad and part-time husband.

“‘Triggy’ (CEO Steven Trigg) said we need someone to manage list management.”

Noble became the Crows’ list manager (2011-14) then general manager of football operations (2015-16).

The Crows dealt with exceptionally challenging moments – the stabbing death of coach Phil Walsh in 2015, the Kurt Tippett salary cap scandal (which Noble had nothing to do with, but had to mop up) and the death from lung cancer of senior assistant Dean Bailey in 2014.

“I personally have no doubt that the stress caused his illness,” Noble said of Bailey, who had been suspended for 16 games in 2013 after an AFL probe into Melbourne’s 2009 season.

“He would never necessarily reflect on it for too long, but you could tell it absolutely burned him to the core as to how he was treated.”

Noble dealt with Patrick Dangerfield in 2015 when the midfielder told him of his decision to return to Victoria.

“He came to me two weeks before he told Paul (Connors, Dangerfield’s manager),” he said.

“We went over to a little Italian restaurant over in West Lakes. I said: ‘You’re leaving.’ He went: ‘Yep … it’s time for me to go home.’

“I said to him: ‘Can you give us one more year? I think we are really close (to a flag).’ He said: ‘No, I can’t. Mardi (Dangerfield’s wife) needs to go.”

LION HUNTER

Noble was headhunted to join Brisbane in late 2016 and his recruitment campaign – along with CEO Greg Swann – helped turn the Lions into a successful club again.

He and Swann set to work on finding the Lions’ next coach. They chose Hawthorn footy boss Chris Fagan.

“‘Swanny’ and I ran the program,” Noble said. “We assessed where we thought our list was and what it actually needed.

“‘Schwabby’ (Peter Schwab, then list manager), myself and Swanny spent a bit of time working out what profile of the coach would be needed for the group.”

He and others led the charge to recruit Charlie Cameron from Adelaide and Lachie Neale from Fremantle in successive years.

“We were planning to go after Lachie in his free agency year, but his manager said, ‘I think he might come now’,” Noble said. “I sent Dom (Ambrogio, list boss) to the Northern Territory. They (Fremantle) had a break and he (Neale) was going fishing. We flew up … and met him off site up there and we kept it under our hats for two weeks from Swanny.”

COACHING BUG BITES

When the chance to become North Melbourne’s senior coach arose it was the itch Noble needed to scratch.

But as a first-time AFL coach trying to instil habits and disciplines into an exceptionally young group, it proved not only difficult but bloody frustrating.

Four wins came in his first season (2021), but the following year the Kangaroos won only one of their first 16 games, which proved to be Noble’s undoing.

He conceded he might have been too hard on the players at times: “I might have got a bit pointy at different times … but creating a high-performance standard is difficult and sometimes challenging, and maybe some people misinterpret that challenge as being too aggressive.”

A 108-point loss to Brisbane in round 3, 2022, triggered a spray, which later became public.

“I was pretty calm and I just came down (to the rooms) and it got the better of me. I shouldn’t have spoken. I should have just walked away and left it,” Noble said.

“Sonja (Hood) and Ben (Amarfio) were standing outside the door. They never came in and said: ‘You need to apologise’.”

Noble said an unsettled, frustrated Jason Horne-Francis was “one of the most talented players I’ve ever dealt with”.

“Jase just had this unbelievable recall and understanding. He was just so frustrated as a young gun wanting to apply his trade. He was wanting us to be good and it just boiled over,” Noble said.

“There were some difficulties in terms of homesickness and frustration with (him) not playing well and us not playing well.

“I don’t think any of it was deliberate, he just wanted to be successful.

“Some environments don’t suit, and you just have to move on … I think he said, ‘It was either him or me’, but we both ended up going.”

THE CALL THAT ENDED IT

Just days after losing a 14th consecutive match, Noble knew what was coming when the president’s number came up on his mobile.

“We chatted on the phone and she (Hood) wanted to catch up and I just said: ‘Look, I know I’m in trouble, what do you want to do?’” Noble said.

“They were at a point where they felt like they needed to make a decision.

“I sent an email to Sonja to pass on to the board to thank them and we got on to what we needed to do in the next 24 hours.

“I spoke to the players … had the presser and the players caught up for dinner so I popped in to say goodbye.”

He has no regrets about taking on the onerous task, but conceded he should have done some more research on what he was walking into.

“I had a crack and it didn’t work out,” he said.

“I didn’t expect the ferocity I got from the media. But I am a big boy. You have to take the good with the bad.

“I take responsibility that I didn’t do enough to get the club into a position (where it needed to be) … I’m responsible for that. But I don’t think the responsibility is just all on my shoulders.”

His task now as chief executive for Dick Johnson Racing is chasing Supercars success, not premiership cups.

But would he ever make a return to footy?

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Tipping in as much as I did … has led me to a different journey and adventure.”