Sometimes the titles of these pieces relate to a recurring thread from the game. Sometimes it’s about a specific moment, or even a particular matchup.
Today’s title is about my feeling while writing, because figuring out words after a win is … a foreign concept.
Given North Melbourne’s most recent win was the last round of 2023, a weekend where half the league’s players are already thinking of their Bali trips, to me this feels like the first *proper* win – for lack of a better term – since Round 2, 2023.
Which, if Google is cooperating with me, makes it 442 days between drinks. That’s a long time!
It means there’s quite a bit to jump around and cover today after the Patreon plug, starting with one of the co-captains.
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While the North Melbourne match analyses are – and always will be – free for all, for those who want a little bit extra the Patreon continues to run. There are three tiers available in 2024:
$2.50 – Debutant – To show support for the site without receiving any extra features
$5 – Rising Star – The first level where there are extra features and early access for certain things
$10 – Brownlow – First access to everything and anything set up for Patrons
To find out more details and sign up, head here for the Patreon page.
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The bye is always an ideal time to reassess what’s worked versus what could use tweaking, and Jy Simpkin’s return saw a shift to the midfield rotations. This might get a little complicated so bear with me.
As detailed back in the Collingwood Match Sim post, Simpkin’s role this season has largely been as a forward coming up to play as a midfielder, which is different to a pure midfield role, or a midfielder spending periods forward.
Saturday was the third* time this season Simpkin has played as a midfielder, but the first time with the specific on-ball partners of Luke Davies-Uniacke, George Wardlaw, Tom Powell, and Harry Sheezel.
(*The first two times were Round 6 when the key difference was no Wardlaw, and Round 7 when the key difference was Will Phillips playing. Along with Sheezel still at half back of course.)
It’s a subtle difference, but one that changes roles, responsibilities, and positioning. And right from the outset Simpkin set the tone. At the first centre bounce, it was him tapping the ball away from congestion, tackling Reuben Ginbey, and getting a handball out to Wardlaw:
More often than not, the ‘main’ on-ballers shoulder the brunt of responsibilities, particularly defensively. Meanwhile the half forwards coming up to the ball – whether for stoppages or in general play – are more so the second layer of operation. Still important to be sure, but not quite as much.
So with Simpkin taking on the extra load, it allowed Sheezel and Powell to float around a bit more and use their creativity to good effect. The luxury of no Tim Kelly and Harley Reid naturally helped, the absence of two prime Eagles movers allowing North more leeway for aggressive positioning.
Take this passage of play for instance, with a particular focus on Simpkin and Sheezel. After a crunching Aidan Corr tackle stops what looked to be a certain Eagles scoring shot, the ball spills and we see Simpkin at the drop – which is where you want your on-ballers to be more often than not.
Conversely, Sheezel – who was in a half forward rotation at the time – has come up to the ball but is floating around the outside looking to be the next passage in the chain. Again, it’s where you’d like your high half forwards to be more often than not.
Simpkin dishes it out to Sheezel, who chains up with multiple disposals, keeps running forward – which is his job to do – and eventually is rewarded with the goal assist to Jaidyn Stephenson. It’s a nice indicator of players playing their role well.
The combination of Simpkin’s game, Sheezel and Powell playing their roles, and Wardlaw and Davies-Uniacke’s impressive games led to a clearance and contest dominance for three quarters. At three quarter time the contested possession count was +17 North, and the clearance count a barely believable +23 North’s way.
We’ll get to the last quarter a little further down the page, but in the meantime a detour to talk about North’s forward 50 pressure and in particular Eddie Ford.
Coming on as the substitute after Wil Dawson’s afternoon ended early due to injury, it was a super important day for Ford. Up until this game, his work without the ball this season had been subpar. There’s no other way to put it and no reason to sugarcoat it.
If Ford is to have a successful AFL career, it’s the area of his game that must improve rapidly and Saturday was a promising start. These type of second phase plays with the ball in dispute hadn’t been in his repertoire…
…and he was also defensively strong inside North’s forward 50, an equal leader with three tackles there alongside Paul Curtis.
Because when any team plays against a West Coast side with Jeremy McGovern and Tom Barrass, the pair will pick off quite a few of the opponents inside 50 entries. Everyone does their work trying to stop it, but the mentality is more like trying to slow down star NBA scorers: they’ll get their points, but it’s about making those points – or in this case, intercepts – take as long as possible to get.
And so far this season for North, when their opponents have taken those intercepts they’ve used it as a base to go coast-to-coast way too easily.
It didn’t happen for West Coast on Saturday because of the aforementioned forward half pressure. The Eagles had 28 rebound 50s and turned eight into inside 50s of their own; roughly a league average rate, a significant improvement.
The key here though, and the number that illustrates North’s work without the ball close to goal, is a further nine of those West Coast rebound 50s were direct turnovers, resulting in three of North’s 11 majors for the afternoon.
Which brings me back to Eddie Ford’s game once again. The benefits from his work without the ball, in tandem with others of course, were plain to see. While the manic, desperate efforts in the dying stages are physically impossible to set as a baseline every week, a half step below it should be achievable week to week.
If it can be combined with his offensive skill set, there’s a successful AFL career ready for him to grab.
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For those who have missed previous match analyses, here are links to the last five weeks:
Assessing and resetting: Round 11 v Port Adelaide
An individual focus: Round 10 v Essendon
Opening the mailbag: Round 9 v Gold Coast
Positional changes: Round 8 v St Kilda
Back to front: Round 7 v Adelaide
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And all the above brings us to the last quarter. When Simpkin kicked the first of the term to put North 33 points up, on the surface the game felt almost over. But in reality, it masked a mindset change West Coast had made a minute before to start the term.
The Eagles are typically an aggressive team from stoppages, for better and worse as explained by the ABC team here. After watching North wheel away from those stoppages for the first three terms, the home team decided to crank the aggression wheel up even further and live with whatever happened.
It turns out Liam Ryan into the middle (after Jackson Archer had done an excellent job on him close to goal), more Jack Petruccelle, and Elliot Yeo putting the cape on is a tough combination to stop when everyone is freewheeling forward at every opportunity.
Because from West Coast’s point of view, it’s either a loss by 30-35 points if things continued as they were with no chance of winning, or a loss by 40-50 points if the changes didn’t work – but those changes were also their only chance of a comeback. Naturally you choose the latter 99.9 percent of the time.
Normally when a team gives up six consecutive goals in half a quarter, there are errors and breakdowns aplenty to point the finger at. In this case for North, it looked like simply a case of being overwhelmed by West Coast pressing every turbo button in Perth at the same time. North simply weren’t good enough to get their hands on the ball through the period of Eagles dominance. It happens.
It wasn’t – at least from my eyes – North either crumbling under pressure or going away from what worked. The first stage of learning how to win is learning how not to lose. In other words, learning to not beat yourself down the stretch of a game.
North ticked that box, and the evidence was immediately after going behind. Naturally there was an ever so slight drop off from West Coast as the score prompted a subconscious change in mindset, but North were able to take advantage by going right back to what worked through the first three quarters.
There was one key personnel change though – made slightly before the Eagles hit the front but able to bed in during the delay from Liam Duggan’s concussion – putting Liam Shiels on-ball. While the primary objective was to get to Yeo as often as possible, the secondary benefit was just getting around the ball to play a defensive role and be the adult in the room.
With the extra defensive presence, it allowed the rest of North’s midfielders to get to work and neutralise West Coast’s aggressive mindset somewhat.
Four of the Eagles’ six last quarter goals came from clearance. If my manual tracking is correct, up until the point they hit the lead they led the count in the last quarter 13-6. From that point on – with North’s change in mind – the visitors won four of the last six clearances.
From there we know how the rest went. Simpkin goal after a free kick that was terrible/hilarious/questionable/insert your preferred word here (but who’s complaining), a piece of magic from Curtis with a snap, and a Corr save on the goal line I still haven’t found a reverse angle of. If it’s been shown anywhere…
But there was one passage I’ve deliberately held off highlighting until the very end. Even though it didn’t happen in the dying stages of the game, it should be kept on hand to show regularly around the club whenever needed and hold up as the gold standard.
There’s an iconic picture of Wayne Schimmelbusch completely and utterly exhausted after North’s win over Carlton in the 1985 Elimination Final, having put every bit of himself – and then some more – into the game.
Although the stakes in Perth on Saturday were naturally far below that afternoon, Tristan Xerri’s chase on Ryan should evoke a similar emotional feeling:
Xerri had no right to even get close to Ryan given the obvious disparity in … everything. But the ruckman kept going, and going, and going, and eventually did just enough to force Ryan’s kick out of bounds.
It should stick in the memory bank for a long, long time.
I appreciate your written eloquence and insights to the north games. Very much the PHD to Reddit Certificate III in analysis.
Certainly Xerri was the chief tone setter in that run down. I loved setting Fisher settle in further as the back line distributor and more on ball time from Sheezel. It was interesting watching the interviews after the game of Jy, LDU and Larkey – all representing evidence of the emotional toll this period has had on them. There is a sense of relief as much as joy or fun. I’m not anticipating the season to turn around and my main interest is in what we do in the draft this year. Bringing in some experienced heads and possibly trying to get what we can for Will Phil and Bull.
Thanks for the great weekly reads.