477 days: The amount of time between North Melbourne wins in Melbourne. Of course it was never going to be anything other than a thriller and yet another nail-biting finish.
Since the bye, every opponent has presented a different challenge for North to conquer, and Gold Coast were no exception.
Perhaps the most impressive part of North’s performance – apart from finally winning at home, of course – was their clear setup to try and neutralise the Suns’ strengths and highlight their weaknesses.
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Gold Coast are:
– A good front half team, in the top five for inside 50 differential
– A good transition team, in the top six for defensive 50 to inside 50 percentage
– A very good handballing team, in the top three for average metres gained per handball
Basically to sum up, they’re:
– Playing like Richmond did under Hardwick.
From a North perspective, it meant two key things:
– The ball use – everywhere, but particularly in the back half – had to be precise
– The pressure around the ball – and particularly in the front half – had to be good to stop Gold Coast flicking through traffic with ease
For the ball use, it’s why there was a concerted focus on uncontested possession and controlling their own movement patterns. In theory, it allows safer exits from the back half, and also when turnovers come they’re in a harder position for opponents to score from.
Sometimes when teams go down that route, having possession becomes the end goal, rather than a means to an end. Thankfully North were the latter instead of the former.
Although the execution was far from perfect, the process was done well enough in the first half to generate quality inside 50 entries – and just as importantly, reduce the effectiveness of Gold Coast’s own entries.
North had 11 scoring shots from 22 entries, the rate of 50 percent well above league average of 44 percent. Meanwhile Gold Coast had 10 shots from 29 entries. But most importantly, of those remaining 19, sixteen were direct turnovers.
For the pressure, while every turnover wasn’t down to North’s pressure on the ball handler, a large percentage were – either directly on the disposal itself or the build-up along the chain forcing a rushed Suns entry.
In the first half it was only Sam Day becoming the best contested mark in the competition that kept Gold Coast with an avenue to goal. Aidan Corr shut Ben King out of the game, and apart from that there was no real consistent system to the Suns’ entries.
While Gold Coast have had this problem all year, for North to continue the trend speaks to the growing comfort of the defensive unit.
Charlie Comben, Corr, Luke McDonald, Jackson Archer, and Darcy Tucker have all played together for the last six matches. Kallan Dawson has been there for four of those six, and Zac Fisher five, before his injury this week coincided with Colby McKercher’s return.
Sometimes continuity can be used as a safety net to wave away required changes. In this case, having the continuity between the defenders has allowed them to grow together each week. Even though Day had his way with Comben early on – and North caught a break when he couldn’t run out the game – as a unit they were still all working together.
It’s no surprise the last three games have been North’s best for scoring shots conceded per inside 50 entry: that defensive improvement coinciding with better pressure around the ball:
North Melbourne’s scoring shots conceded per inside 50 %
Round 1-14: 50.8%
Round 15-17: 36.1%
I’d expect it to take a short-term hit with the pending re-integration of Griffin Logue and the opponents looming on the horizon, but in a general system sense it’s a promising sign that things are progressing nicely. Which seems to be the trend nearly all over the ground.
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For those who have missed previous match analyses, here are links to the last five matches:
Midfield mixing: Round 16 v Western Bulldogs
Decisions and progress: Round 15 v Melbourne
Riding the rollercoaster: Round 14 v Collingwood
Foreign concepts: Round 13 v West Coast
Assessing and resetting: Round 11 v Port Adelaide
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Going into the game, Gold Coast ranked second for scoring shots conceded per inside 50. And when their pressure is on around the ball, backed up by Sam Collins, Charlie Ballard, and Mac Andrew behind it, it’s no wonder why.
So for North to manage 22 scoring shots from 46 entries – their second-best conversion percentage of the year – was an excellent effort. While the midfield advantage naturally helped, as did the forwards working in tandem as explained post-Collingwood game, the part I’d like to focus on today is a simple one: taking what the defence gives you.
No defence, no matter how good they are, can cover everything all at once. It’s physically impossible to do. Of course the best units cover more than the worst ones, but there’s always going to be something available, at varying difficulty levels.
To start at the upper scale of ‘varying difficulty levels’, the Tom Powell torpedo was a prime example of taking what the Gold Coast defence gave North. Because they try to press so high up the ground there’s opportunity to get over the back with some long kicking when in transition. A 70-metre barrel was next level, but the process behind it was sound.
McKercher’s kick at the end of his lung-bursting run was another example. Somehow after running 100+ metres, starting from the defensive goal square before gathering again on the back flank, he’d recognised most Suns had retreated in expectation of a long kick.
He hooked it slightly around the body instead to find Nick Larkey: a level of composure most players can’t fathom under any pressure, let alone one in just his 10th game after a long, mazy run at high speed.
In other situations, taking what the Suns defence gave North became a balancing act between two choices:
a) Lower percentage of retaining possession, higher percentage shot if it comes off
b) Higher percentage of retaining possession, lower percentage shot if it comes off
More often than not North chose b) and let their best kicks take care of the rest. Harry Sheezel’s goal late in the third quarter was another clear example of the process.
Often teams want to go long to the top of the square in this situation and then try to lock it in. But the Suns had numbers back to make that option choice a) in here. A kick to that area would have meant a goal if followed by a North mark – the likely result was a Gold Coast mark.
Instead what the Suns gave North was a set shot to Sheezel (or Cam Zurhaar) from distance and angle, but a guaranteed shot on goal.
Taking option b) and trusting the process worked out soundly.
It’s another sign of things progressing well as North prepare for their toughest test next week at the SCG.
To finish off after the team structure promo, a look at midfield changes, the last few minutes, and intangibles around mentalities in close finishes.
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Odds & Ends
The midfield changes
Last week’s post was all about the midfield mix and how in the absence of George Wardlaw, the learning was it couldn’t be as simple as plugging in someone else to replace his minutes.
The change against Gold Coast was dropping Will Phillips’ hard tag and playing him as more of a ‘normal’ midfielder, albeit with a defensive slant, and then running a deeper rotation overall.
Powell and Sheezel had more pure midfield minutes than last week and it was basically a five-player rotation, instead of last week where it was three on-ballers and spot minutes to Powell and Sheezel.
It worked much better overall, undoubtedly helped by Jarrod Witts’ absence and Touk Miller’s wrist injury, but these are the little things learned along the journey from week to week.
With Wardlaw back next week, there are options at North’s disposal. Phillips can potentially go back to a tag. Maybe someone’s spot in jeopardy if North want to go without a tag and test themselves head-to-head. Or maybe it’s a six-player on-ball rotation. We will see.
The last few minutes
In last week’s Notebook, I wrote about an emerging league-wide trend of teams playing a little too safe when protecting a lead.
Given North’s last few weeks, and their general inexperience on the whole in situations like the closing stages on Saturday, it would have been understandable if they fell into the same trap.
Instead they kept at it and had a handful of golden chances to kill the game off in those minutes before Wil Powell’s goal to cut it to five points: Luke Davies Uniacke’s near-goal of the year, Eddie Ford selflessness when it was actually time to be selfish, the ball bouncing off Tristan Xerri’s chest in the forward 50, just to name a few.
In a big picture sense it’s promising to see this because the easy option is hold on and go ultra defensive. Especially given the win-loss record over the last few years. The intangible in all this is…
An aggressive mentality
Before Saturday, North’s record over the last 97 matches read: 11 wins, 1 draw, 85 losses. It’s the type of run that can leave mental scarring which manifests in pressure situations.
Saturday’s result and process doesn’t mean ‘everything is fine, all systems go’ by any means. But seeing Davies-Uniacke take the game on down the stretch, the desperation defending from McKercher, Bailey Scott’s string of efforts late on, Sheezel having five of the 13 final term inside 50s, all of it can only be a good thing down the track.
Because Saturday’s opposition was a case study in how a long stretch of nothingness can damage a psyche, and all the things Damien Hardwick is frantically trying to undo it.
The Suns haven’t won away from home (Gold Coast/Darwin) since Round 9 last season and are on a 15-game losing streak on the road. And with 30 seconds to go, trailing by four points, they’re chipping sideways in their defensive 50.
Whether those sorts of mental mishaps manifest in North’s game down the track and are merely lying dormant at the moment, only time will tell. But so far the mentality looks surprisingly positive and aggressive in pressure moments, which is half the battle.
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