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North Melbourne’s 2025 season checklist

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With North Melbourne’s season opener* against the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium only days away, it’s time for the 2025 checklist.

The goal here isn’t to stand on a soapbox and say ‘these things should happen! If they don’t it’s a failure!’ It’s to list the keys – from my perspective at least – to a successful campaign.

There are five topics to cover. Three focus on the now, two have more of an eye on the future, and there’s a postscript to wrap it all up.

(*If current weather forecasts hold up and the roof is closed, it’ll also be one of the most uncomfortable nights at the football of all time for most spectators. Take it from someone who has had the misfortune of attending a handful of Renegades games in the height of summer with the roof closed)

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The Patreon is up and running once again for 2025, which you can find right here. The three tiers are much the same as previous years, with refined features for the top two.

In addition to Patreon, you can find me on Twitter – and also Bluesky, where vibes are much more pleasant and there’s much less hate. It’s nice.

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The now

Staying in games

During an interview with the AFL website in mid-February, Alastair Clarkson explicitly laid out one of North’s key aims for 2025 (quote edited for length):

“A key measure for us this year will be how many games are we still really, really competitive in late in games to give us a chance? It’s how deep we can go into games…”

If we’re to use 2024’s output as a base to work from, we end up with something along the lines of…

So, to simplify:

Naturally the immediate reaction is ‘no blow outs! Always in games!’ Realistically this never happens unless you’re a table-topping, historically dominant outfit. On last check that will not be North Melbourne in 2025, even though it would be nice.

So what makes for a pleasing result here? The topic can be steered in one of two directions:

(The third option is no gain on 2024 at all, but we’re ignoring that here)

Considering North are coming from a base of three wins/four ‘live’ losses/16 blowouts, is something like eight or nine wins/five ‘live’ losses/ten blowouts acceptable?

Or is the preference more along the lines of six wins/12 ‘live’ losses/five blowouts? What provides North with better signs for the future?

Because the more wins path might turn heads elsewhere and open up different avenues with player acquisition, but it could also be based on a little bit of fool’s gold. Conversely, the fewer wins + staying in more games path might suggest something more sustainable.

Either side could be argued for hours, but one thing nearly everyone can agree on is the best result for this topic being something like eight or nine wins with less than five or six blowouts, of course.

Improving the turnover game

Here’s the complete list of teams who forced fewer turnovers than North Melbourne in 2024…

…and 2023:

Creating lots of turnovers isn’t a foolproof method for success – Brisbane were in the bottom third last year, for instance – but 18th in 2024 and 17th in 2023 is a fairly clear sign there’s improvement needed without the ball.

It can come in a whole range of ways. Teams can press higher up the ground, they can throw more numbers around the ball in contests, there can even be a bit of offence sacrificed to improve the defence, amongst countless other options.

The point is while there’s no uniform way to create a more aggressive defence, something has to be done by North to create a better team defence than previous years.

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The Create Your Own Depth Chart feature is now part of the List Management suite, all on the $5 tier for Patreon subscribers:

You can subscribe to the Patreon for 2025 right here. The three tiers are much the same as previous years, with refined features for the top two.

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The players with career-defining seasons

Career defining sounds more ominous than intended, but nevertheless, at time of writing there are 16 players out of contract at the end of 2025*:

Miller Bergman, Callum Coleman-Jones, Aidan Corr, Luke Davies-Uniacke, Kallan Dawson, Eddie Ford, Josh Goater, Robert Hansen, Cooper Harvey, Finn Maley, Geordie Payne, Will Phillips, Toby Pink, Brynn Teakle, and Darcy Tucker.

(*If I’ve kept up to date on my contract spreadsheets over summer)

The six bolded players are the ones I’ll be keeping an eye on, as the other 10 fall into easily explainable categories. Some are depth, some are experience, some are still growing, and one in particular is ‘please sign’. No prizes for guessing who.

But for the bolded players, there is a route to becoming consistent AFL players if they’re good enough. The watch on Goater is more to hope he can string a block of games together after his injury troubles, while Bergman has a half back spot waiting for him if he can rise to the challenge.

There’s been plenty of words on this blog about Ford’s strengths and deficiencies; more of the former and less of the latter helps the team. It’s not a coincidence the best five-game stretch of his career coincided with North’s wins over West Coast and Gold Coast, along with the close losses to Collingwood and Melbourne.

The two small forwards in Hansen and Harvey – the former now an incumbent, the latter arguably the last spot on the list currently – don’t have a huge group of contenders to battle against to earn (or in Hansen’s case, continue with) a spot in the AFL side. It’s the quickest path to helping North improve, as we’ve discussed countless times in recent years.

Which leaves us with Will Phillips. Will he be the odd man out of the midfield when Jy Simpkin (available for Round 1) and George Wardlaw (4-6 weeks away) are both fit? Can he round out his game to force someone else out of the on-ball rotation?

If some of these six players take a step forward, along with the inevitable natural development to come from top tier young talent, then North are in a great position. The only boxes left to tick from a list management perspective are…

The future

How the young key position players develop

Matt Whitlock, Wil Dawson, Taylor Goad, Finn Maley, and even Charlie Comben. Each player of the quintet has varying expectations and are at different stages of their career. The one constant: how important it is for as many as possible to develop (or in Comben’s case, continue developing) rapidly.

Poor Whitlock will be tagged with the ‘North traded a first-round pick for him’ label for at least the next couple of years, putting a lot of pressure on the teenager’s head and amplifying the importance of wise voices in his ear. That sort of chat can get to experienced players, let alone someone in their first year.

Dawson’s arguably the most intriguing of the five. A debut well before most people expected, then an injury to push him back a few steps. That one-two punch can foreshadow a dip in production during the second season, trying in vain to reach a bar set higher than normal for a key position player in their first campaign. Is he a forward? Is he a back? Is he both? Who knows?

While Goad and Maley continue to develop at the lower level, the ceiling of Comben as a defender (assuming he stays there) will be a key story. We already know he’s a good interceptor, but the one-on-one work was suspect. Can he take a significant step forward in either facet and if he does, how will that influence the rest of the defensive unit?

Who is winning games for North Melbourne

This brief section needs an important disclaimer first. Two of them actually.

1) This isn’t supposed to imply these players aren’t important
2) This isn’t supposed to imply these players aren’t valuable, each in their own way

That said. If North are winning or staying in games through Jack Darling turning back the clock with a few bags, or a heavy Luke Parker influence on-ball and forward, or Caleb Daniel solo running the show off half back, what does that mean long-term?

The goal is for these players to contribute largely with supporting roles to those who will be around for the next six to eight years and beyond and perhaps take charge here and there. Not to consistently lead the way instead.

Otherwise it means two things have happened:

a) A short-term sugar hit
b) Much bigger list problems emerging long-term

Postscript

And because that would be an obscenely gloomy way to end a piece, some positivity instead with a list of realistic things I’d love to see in 2025:

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