A week after an impressive win at Marvel Stadium, there were more positive signs for North Melbourne at Adelaide Oval. Ultimately it was an afternoon to provide a reminder of steps that still need to be taken.*
Against an Adelaide side clicking on nearly all cylinders, a 36-point loss would likely have been well over 60 in previous years. That it wasn’t is a reminder of North’s improvement.
There was a plan in place to try and minimise Adelaide’s work after turnover, which had blitzed St Kilda and Essendon over the first two weeks. It did help slow the Crows down a little; whether it was a sign of North’s plan working, or just being a better side than the Saints and Bombers is up for debate.
(*One of those steps might be boycotting any future games at Adelaide Oval to save the trouble)
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Before getting to the defensive side, the area that stood out most (for me, at least) on Sunday was North’s struggle to move the ball with any fluidity.
To be fair, large parts of that were due to Adelaide’s defensive setup, squeezing extremely high and minimising North’s options both in possession and further along the chain.
It meant all the visible confusion nearly every time Caleb Daniel got the ball was by design. Adelaide’s design, to be clear. Although the Crows would have preferred Daniel didn’t get possession, once he did, their defence rapidly shifted into deny mode. What it meant was most of the time Daniel had no viable option to continue the chain.
While the stat sheet showed 33 possessions for Daniel, few had the impact he would have liked. North had 37 rebound 50s for the day, but only six* became inside 50s of their own, a wildly low conversion which would rank bottom of the league over a whole season.
(*Tracking completed manually; normal disclaimers apply about it potentially being out a touch either way)
It’s where the lack of a second threatening distributor comes into focus, touched on briefly in the pre-season. Although Finn O’Sullivan is progressing so, so well in the early stages of his career, asking him to be a high possession half back is a little unrealistic.
In turn it makes North’s ball use out of the back half easier for good opponents to game plan against. With fewer options, it allows a team defence to either load up on preventing the initial player gaining possession (i.e. Daniel) or preventing the second and third possessions in the chain (i.e. how Adelaide ended up approaching it).
Harry Sheezel moved to half back in the last quarter and although we’ll touch on that more at the bottom of the piece, it could be a sign there’s a tweak on the horizon.
In the meantime it’s a topic to watch closely.
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The intriguing part of North’s defensive focus in open play was their approach after Adelaide found a mark, particularly in the back half of the ground.
Obviously when the ball was in dispute North were looking to create turnovers and swarm, but after Adelaide won possession and found the initial mark – which was much more often than North would have liked – the team defence attempted to settle into something resembling a mid-block in soccer.
For the unaware, the name is relatively self-explanatory. The point of a mid-block is to defend the middle third of the ground in a way that makes it tough for the team in possession to play through it.
From a football (Aussie Rules) perspective, the ideal result is defending the middle third of the ground, both in length and width, eventually forcing the team in possession to try either a low percentage aggressive kick, or a long down the line option that can be easily repelled.
It was a different approach to what North had in each of the first two rounds, and it did help partly in slowing Adelaide down out of the back half. At least when the contest and/or turnover losses weren’t so bad there was no hope of the defence getting set in time.
Because a big part of the Crows’ success through the first two rounds had been around spreading the ground and then having a balance between long and short kicks. That balance shifted more to short kicks on Sunday as they looked for a way through North’s defence.
It wasn’t a coincidence the home team’s ball movement looked different to the first two rounds. Much like Adelaide’s defence influenced North’s offence, North’s defence influenced Adelaide’s offence.
Whether it was a situational defence rolled out in an attempt to nullify Adelaide’s strengths, or something planned to be more permanent, it was either a new look or something I hadn’t picked up on until now. Both situations are possible.
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A few weeks into the season, we have enough posts to start rolling out the ‘in case you missed it’. So without any further ado, the last few posts on The Shinboner, plus…
2025’s Team Structures Page, now updated!
Trend checking: Round 2’s Notebook
North Melbourne’s Round 2 analysis v Melbourne
An all-positive piece: Round 1’s Notebook
North Melbourne’s Round 1 analysis v Western Bulldogs
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Odds & Ends
Defensive shift: Charlie Comben went from playing on Sam Darcy in Round 1, to playing on none of Riley Thilthorpe, Darcy Fogarty, or Taylor Walker in Round 3. It’s a fundamental change. In the season opener it was Griffin Logue entrusted with playing on a smaller forward while Comben took the main defensive role. Will Comben’s role hold when Logue is fit again? Time will tell.
The benefit of experience: There was one passage in the third quarter where the benefit of Luke Parker and Jack Darling’s recruitment became obvious. To be clear it was obvious already, but we know what I mean.
Earlier in the piece I mentioned how the Crows have been great at picking and choosing which opposing players get possession. In open play situations like this where there are multiple options, they ensure the ball remains away from players who can hurt them in possession and happily live with lesser lights having ball in hand.
It meant when Jack Darling picked it up on the wing, Crows covered off Colby McKercher and Luke Davies-Uniacke on either side, living with Darling making the decision ball in hand.
Darling kept his head and put it to a threatening area, where Luke Parker arrived to provide defensive cover at ground level. When possession spilled to Parker, he used vision to spot Darling still lurking out wide, who converted.
This type of passage didn’t happen in 2024.
Harry Sheezel: It’s taken nearly 50 games, but this is the first time Sheezel has experienced anything near a form slump since his debut. Even though his raw numbers were good in the first fortnight, the impact wasn’t what we’ve been accustomed to. Through three quarters today he was well below standard, before being thrown behind the ball in the last for a kick start.
While part of the move would have been in a search for varied options out of the back half, as mentioned above, it was likely a ‘two birds with one stone’ type deal. Whether the half back shift holds next week against a Sydney side investing more of their resources in defence compared to last year, the option is there to change up the mix if needed.