Decisions and progress: Round 15, 2024 v Melbourne

Three single figure games in a row; three games that couldn’t have played out any more different to each other.

North Melbourne’s performance against Melbourne at the MCG was perhaps the most illuminating of those three games, controlling large portions in general play but still staring at a near 40-point deficit late in the third quarter.

The subsequent flurry to set up a thrilling end was thanks to a number of items, tied to both individual and team. The common word linking individual and team: Progress.

It also means there’s plenty to try and cover in today’s post. It’s in the jump around format, bouncing from topic to topic. Let’s get into it.

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The game style

From the outset it looked like there was a conscious decision to deny Melbourne the football, which in turn called for North to possess it more themselves.

Heading into Saturday night, the Dees ranked fourth for marks per game. For better or worse, this season they’ve tried to be measured and precise with possession going forward. It is absolutely not how I’d go about it with the forward options at their disposal, but that’s a conversation for another time.

From a North point of view, what it meant was by trying to deny Melbourne the ball, in theory it’d prevent the Dees from getting their game going. We saw the longer the game went, the better it worked because North found the right balance in possession. Melbourne ended with only 286 disposals. It was by far their lowest of the season, ‘beating’ the previous mark of 313.

But the flip side to owning the ball is it allowed the Melbourne defence – still strong even without Jake Lever – to get set. Early on it felt the default standard was a bit spaced out and slow. Those two things sound mutually exclusive, but what it meant was North were unable to get numbers to preferred positions, allowing Melbourne to peel off and intercept with relative ease.

The key tweak was actually using the boundary more, saturating key areas and taking it step by step while realising this wouldn’t be an end-to-end Collingwood v2 game. Think of it this way: it’s easier for a third player to intercept when he’s making it a two-on-one. It’s much harder for a defender to peel off and cleanly intercept when he’s making it a four-on-three, or even a five-on-four.

It was far from perfect and led to some dour passages, but it cut off a key source of Melbourne’s plan and allowed North to work their way back into it. It was only a temporary lapse late in the third quarter – completely understandable from a mental point of view after getting no reward (and undeservedly penalised) for a strong period – that saw North fail to execute the plan.

The secondary benefit came in the last quarter where North had to find an extra gear to get back into the game. Once numbers are saturating one area of the ground, what’s left in other areas of the ground? Space. Lots of space.

Late on, when Melbourne were scrambling, it was a result of North using that space and giving the Dees defence a different look to what they had dealt with before that point. It all works in tandem – the last quarter ball movement wouldn’t have worked as well without what came before, Melbourne would have eaten North up and been 10 goals in front if North tried to play that way from start to finish.

In the big picture it’s exciting to see clear game-specific plans come into the equation. Down the track, when it gets to the stage where North’s Plan A – i.e. the type of offence we saw early on against Collingwood – is enough for opponents to shift their base style, this willingness to counter the counter should serve North well.

Jackson Archer

Two kicks, six disposals, and no score: The stat line of Bayley Fritsch, thanks to Archer’s job on him.

That’s not my main takeaway from Archer’s game though. Up until this point his defensive efforts had obviously been head and shoulders above most of his teammates, but they’d largely been confined to his direct opponent in one-on-one situations. That type of player has a limited ceiling and is only used situationally – at best – on better teams.

Saturday night was different. It was the first time Archer had consistently made aggressive decisions in the greater team structure, taking a few more risks with his defensive positioning and looking to influence there, in addition to his primary role.

If something along those lines can be maintained it’s step two of three on the way to a long-term player. Step one is already ticked with his general defensive ethos, while the third step is becoming merely league average – or even just a touch below that – offensively. It’s the recipe for 150+ games if all three combine.

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For those who have missed previous match analyses, here are links to the last five matches:

Riding the rollercoaster: Round 14 v Collingwood
Foreign concepts: Round 13 v West Coast
Assessing and resetting: Round 11 v Port Adelaide
An individual focus: Round 10 v Essendon
Opening the mailbag: Round 9 v Gold Coast

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Paul Curtis

After the West Coast game I dedicated a section to Eddie Ford’s performance without the ball. In this post it’s a section for Paul Curtis doing similar.

Over the last month or so, Curtis’ improvement in general positioning and mindset has been noticeable. Some of my video analysis earlier in the season highlighting the lack of forward pressure had Curtis as a prominent reason for it.

Tackling is a useful stat to use – and Curtis had six of them against Melbourne – but sometimes it’s just about being in the right spot to stop the ball getting close to you in the first place. It’s the type of thing that doesn’t show up on a stat sheet, or the broadcast camera view, but if done well it forces teams to take lower percentage options more often than not.

Naturally some of Curtis’ efforts against Melbourne were down to the Demons’ ball use not being overly threatening as a rule, but when combined with the general team uplift over the last few weeks it’s allowed North to spend more time in their forward half.

Before the bye North were last for time in forward half differential by so far they weren’t even in the same universe as second last. Since the bye, with admittedly a small sample size, it’s progressed to a normal below average team, a significant jump.

For Curtis, he doesn’t need to be elite without the ball to have a long career. But he needs to be somewhere around league average to be in the best 22 of a good side and allow his offensive talent to shine.

The last few weeks have been a promising step in the right direction if he can maintain it.

Sticking around

For all of North’s efforts, when Max Gawn put Melbourne up by 39 points with four minutes remaining in the third quarter, it felt like the same recipe from a handful of games earlier in the season and the slow fade out would continue to the final siren.

It’s a complete intangible and impossible to measure with any accuracy, but I’m convinced if the same game happened at some point in the first two months of the season it would have ended in a comfortable 50+ point win for the Dees.

Especially given the complete clustershambles (I just made up a word) of the 10 minutes preceding Melbourne’s run, where the players surely felt like every positive passage either wasn’t rewarded or inexplicably penalised.

More on that specific part at the bottom of the piece, but for this topic it’s another step in the right direction that fading out didn’t happen, with the scoreboard going in the opposite direction instead.

It doesn’t mean the days of blowouts are over by any means. The Bulldogs next week will be a test a step above Melbourne and Collingwood. They’re playing some quality football and it’s on the verge of translating to results if they keep key players on the park.

But North’s conscious decision to not let go of the rope – holding on for the third week in a row and adding to their efforts after falling behind in the final quarter against West Coast and Collingwood – is a show of collective leadership.

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Rotational changes

It was most likely a short-term call given player availability, direct matchups, and general game style, but the seventh defensive rotation was turned over to a rotating midfielder. It was mainly Tom Powell, but also a bit of Harry Sheezel at times, and for the closing stages of the second quarter it was even Luke Davies-Uniacke. I thought he may have momentarily been confused about which end North were kicking to, junior football style, but it was all above board.

It’s the dual domino effect of Will Phillips’ role in the side and no AFL-ready midfielders on the injury list; fitting everyone in means playing some Tetris. Kallan Dawson’s suspension and Melbourne’s second + third talls being Harry Petty and Daniel Turner meant North could easily get away with just Aidan Corr and Charlie Comben this week. But there’ll be no such luxury next week against the Bulldogs, both Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy set to return and partner Jamarra Ugle-Hagan.

Dawson will surely come straight back in and North revert to three tall defenders, which would make this experiment a short one. And that’s before even considering the imminent return of Colby McKercher.

It’s almost like there’s about to be some … genuine selection pressure. That’s nice.

The umpiring standards

Hanlon’s razor states, ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.’ When it comes to current AFL umpiring standards, it should read, ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.’

The most basic decisions – both ways – were missed all night long, by all umpires. Davies-Uniacke somehow enjoyed a 70-metre penalty instead of 50 because counting is too difficult on a ground where each mowed strip of grass is nine metres wide and has been for many a year.

Eddie Ford ‘earned’ a 50 early in the last quarter after his feigned handball made Caleb Windsor take a step, when the rule for two entire years has been to allow the step and reset the mark.

There was a solid 10-minute stretch in the third quarter where all control was lost with a string of horrendous decisions, arguably the most egregious coming when Steven May earned a free kick for a dangerous tackle despite his head not getting close to the ground and the controlling umpire taking an eternity to pay it – potentially on advice from his out of zone partner.

The entire night saw the holding the ball interpretation not even revert to earlier this season, but instead some magical fantasy land where it apparently only existed if a series of mythical conditions were met. And then at the first centre bounce of the last quarter, it was paid more in line with the last month. Because ~reasons~.

Calling the performance a dog’s breakfast is too much praise. A dog’s breakfast would be utopia compared to what we saw at the MCG. If I made that many mistakes at my job, in such a short space of time, I’d rightfully get hauled over the coals.