Ancient proverb: Two and a half wins at the bye is much better than zero wins at the bye.
It’s been a wildly fluctuating season. An early, spirit-raising win, almost immediately followed by three poor performances in a row. Then four consecutive games decided by single figures directly afterwards, before fading dramatically in the final quarter before the bye.
Making sense of it all has meant narratives flailing in any old direction; different data points allowing everyone to form their own opinion, whether in good faith or bad.
Hopefully the week off has settled everything somewhat. The plan for today’s post is to take a breath, take stock, and recalibrate before North Melbourne resume on Sunday against West Coast.
We’ll go through what has worked individually, balanced out by what hasn’t worked as a collective.
Then we’ll touch base on a couple of the key pre-season topics, before finishing with what constitutes success in the second half of the season.
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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, even though there’s not a large AFL community yet.
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What has worked individually
Last year saw North make changes at the mid-season bye that set up a solid run of form, so there’s every chance similar will happen again this year. It could impact this section as things are reshuffled.
But until that happens, let’s carry on with a look at individuals on-field. It’s an often-neglected section on here with all the words about team and the collective.
(Disclaimer: My assumption is Luke Parker would be number one with a bullet if we were able to see all his off-field contributions combined with his more than serviceable play on field.)
(Disclaimer 2: If a name isn’t on this list, it doesn’t mean they’ve been poor. It’s more these five names have caught my eye the most)
Paul Curtis: He took a step about halfway through last year to add more forward pressure to his undoubted offensive skills, and this year’s he’s taken another step in all facets of his game. If it weren’t for the three-match suspension there’s every chance he would be leading the best and fairest, and North might have an extra win or two.
At least the suspension looks like it forced a rethink of MRO assessments, to some extent. Maybe Curtis is Lindsay Thomas’ spiritual successor in that regard?
Tristan Xerri: The only person who could have been ahead of full-half-season Curtis in the best and fairest was Xerri. There is still plenty of improvement left in Xerri’s game and ruck craft, which is why it’s so promising to see him at this high a level right now.
Jack Darling: 11 goals in 11 games isn’t exactly the profile of a world beating acquisition. However. It’s not a coincidence that with Darling in the side, we’ve seen Curtis improve significantly, and have Cam Zurhaar on track for a career best year on the scoreboard.
Those two have been able to slot into roles more suited to their skill set while there’s a natural number two key forward in the side still providing enough to draw focus from opposing defenders.
Riley Hardeman: It’s the age-old conundrum: Would <player x> have contributed this well if they were in the side earlier, or was their development handled well enough to enable this level of play once an AFL opportunity was earned?
Either way, Hardeman’s last five games have been impressive as a secondary distributor off half-back and a medium defender. There were a couple of moments against Gold Coast where he hardly covered himself in glory with the latter role, but from the Port Adelaide game on he’s been much more solid while finding himself in more useful areas offensively.
Hopefully by the end of the season he’s developed enough reps to become a primary distributor, consistently taking the game on.
Dylan Stephens: While the ceiling for Stephens probably hasn’t changed – yet, at least – minimising his anonymous periods in games has led to arguably a career best run of form on the wing.
It’s been needed too with Bailey Scott struggling in the opposite direction and losing his place. Stephens as a constant, largely as the open side winger, has allowed for experimentation elsewhere. So far in his career, Stephens hasn’t been able to maintain this run of form for more than a short-term period. It makes these next few weeks crucial.
What hasn’t worked for the team
Two major things haven’t worked.
First is the defence. It’s been covered time, time, and time again, so there’s no point going over it in depth again.
Although it’s been better in patches over the last few weeks – adjustments made against Essendon come to mind, by and large it has come from contest improvements and offensive tweaks making it slightly easier to defend, as opposed to the team defence working more in sync.
The game against Collingwood, albeit likely a one-off, was an indicator of defensive struggles. Because of the acceptance they couldn’t stop the Magpies in space, the ball movement method changed to protect the defence. It’s a fine line between a tailored offensive method to threaten the scoreboard in different ways, versus a tailored offensive method designed to protect a defence.
The approach against Collingwood was largely set up to achieve the latter. Every so often it’s the correct way to go, but for a team at North’s stage of growth they should be few and far between. The goal should be building a sustainable method on both sides of the ball, but the struggles in open play have led to compromises. Ideally we don’t see much more of it for the rest of the season unless North’s hand is forced due to unforeseen circumstances.
Point two in the ‘hasn’t worked’ camp is any sort of notable improvement in North’s turnover game offensively. It was another checklist item from the pre-season piece but 11 games in we’re yet to see much lift off.
So far this year North rank last for turnovers forced per game. To repeat what I wrote pre-season…
“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.”
…adding 18th in 2025 to the previous two years isn’t a promising sign. In addition, North’s points per turnover is also lowest in the league. Add the two and we see North not creating many turnovers and not scoring much from the ones they do force. It’s not an optimal combination.
Part of it, once again, goes back to those defensive issues. If the team defence can’t function well in a game that’s not either dominated by the offence (i.e. the second half v Brisbane) or played largely in tightly contested spaces (i.e. the Richmond game), then it’s the restrictor holding everything else back.
Get that part right and it should remove the last major handbrake stopping North from supercharging this year’s incremental improvements.
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For those who have missed it, the last five North match analysis pieces on The Shinboner, plus…
2025’s Team Structures Page
North Melbourne’s Round 11 analysis v Collingwood
North Melbourne’s Round 10 analysis v Richmond
North Melbourne’s Round 9 analysis v Brisbane
North Melbourne’s Round 8 analysis v Essendon
North Melbourne’s Round 7 analysis v Port Adelaide
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‘Staying in games’
Speaking of incremental improvements, to revisit a key item from the pre-season checklist:
“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…
- 7: Games that were either a win or live late on
- 14: Games that were losses and not live
- 2: Swing games (R2 v Fremantle, R16 v Bulldogs; personal opinion is they weren’t live but debatable whether I’m in the majority)
Through 11 games in 2025, my tally looks like so:
- 5: Games that were either a win or live late on
- 5: Games that were losses and not live
- 1: Swing game (R1 v Bulldogs; personal opinion is it didn’t realistically feel live halfway through the last quarter, but happy to be outvoted)
It’s a much better ratio to date, which explains the improved percentage compared to the same time last year:
2025 after 11 games: 2 wins, 1 draw, 8 losses, 78.1%
2024 after 11 games: 0 wins, 11 losses, 55.9%
In many ways it fits the theme of the season so far: small improvements without many eye-catching steps forward.
The out of contract players
Alongside mid-season draft acquisitions Zac Banch and Cooper Trembath, there are a further 12 Kangaroos out of contract at the end of the season:
Miller Bergman, Callum Coleman-Jones, Kallan Dawson, Eddie Ford, Josh Goater, Cooper Harvey, Finnbar Maley, Geordie Payne, Will Phillips, Toby Pink, Brynn Teakle, and Darcy Tucker.
With North set to lose their two extra rookie list spots, it’ll mean some tighter calls. But as it stands, most of those decisions appear relatively straight forward, whether an individual’s ceiling is as depth, in trouble, on the borderline, or injury dependent.
Ideally a couple of those players can come from the clouds to change the thinking.
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For those who have missed it, the last five Notebook entries on The Shinboner, plus…
2025’s Team Structures Page
Carlton, Port, and Bulldogs health checks: Round 12’s Notebook
Teams moving in different directions: Round 11’s Notebook
How to get 49 disposals in a game: Round 10’s Notebook
Rolling stoppages and fast-tracked rookies: Round 9’s Notebook
A centre bounce setup: Round 8’s Notebook
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What constitutes success in the second half of the year
If we divide the remaining games into different buckets using current form lines and trends, it ends up looking something like this:
– Very winnable: West Coast (Round 13), St Kilda (Round 21), Richmond (Round 23)
– Somewhat winnable: Carlton (Round 15), Melbourne (Round 18), Sydney (Round 19)
– Who knows: GWS (Round 22)
– Unlikely: Fremantle (Round 14), Hawthorn (Round 16), Bulldogs (Round 17), Geelong (Round 20), Adelaide (Round 24)
Winning three of those first six listed games would take North to their best season output this decade. Seriously.
It should be the minimum aim for the back end of 2025, along with staying in a handful more games until late, continuing to improve the talking point mentioned earlier.
But more important than the results is the process behind it. The number one priority should be whether there’s any improvement in North’s turnover game, either through forcing more or scoring from existing ones. As talked about earlier, there hasn’t been a huge progression in that area of their game, linking up with the team defence.
The contest and stoppage game is good enough, for lack of a better term, at this stage. The turnover game needs to improve.
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