Sunday afternoon at Marvel Stadium saw some good, some bad, and a whole host of questions raised in North Melbourne’s eight-point loss to St Kilda.
Without a straight forward storyline to track throughout the entire game, today’s post is going to be in the jump around format, bouncing from topic to topic.
There’ll be a couple of individual focuses, one team focus, before finishing with a mini checklist of personnel shifts that’d be nice to see in the final three games 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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Colby McKercher’s run of form
Right from the start of the year, McKercher has graced these pages frequently. Whether it was in pre-season as he adjusted to a new role forward of the ball, the early stages of the season as he struggled, to when he started to make some progress, and then in recent weeks as he’s quickly become the prime driver off half back while finding the balance between the right decisions and the level of aggressiveness.
For all of that, and considering his quality outing against the Saints, it’s worth taking a step back and figuring out how McKercher should be implemented in the future.
While it was worth giving him some reps in the high half forward role coming up to the ball, before turning around and heading to home, it’s like watching a different person when McKercher starts from half back with the game in front of him. If we rated his comfort levels out of 10 based on position, it was about 1.5 as a high half forward compared to approximately 29 when he’s running at the game.
It leaves two main options for McKercher, both feasible for the long-term:
1) Every team has half forwards who come up to the ball and essentially play as extra midfielders. If McKercher plays on one of them as a nominal half back, he’s more or less getting some on-ball reps while keeping him in dangerous areas. It’d be a little different to most of his minutes at the moment where he’s largely deeper in defence.
2) He moves into a ‘proper’ on-ball rotation, but with some tweaks made to the unit to make sure North get the most out of his skill set. Most players in a team follow team instructions, but some get the instructions bent to suit them. McKercher falls into the latter category.
If I had to choose between the above, I’d take option 1, purely to relieve some stress among the log jam of potential on-ballers while still keeping McKercher in a spot where he can influence a game heavily.
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For those who have missed it, the last five North Melbourne match analysis pieces on The Shinboner, plus…
The 2025 Team Structures Page
North Melbourne’s Round 20 analysis v Geelong
North Melbourne’s Round 19 analysis v Sydney
North Melbourne’s Round 18 analysis v Melbourne
North Melbourne’s Round 17 analysis v Western Bulldogs
North Melbourne’s Round 16 analysis v Hawthorn
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Retreating when under pressure
This isn’t easy to rectify, by any means; on the see saw it trends more towards the mindset side rather than the game style side.
Either way, it’s noticeable how, once North are under pressure, their first – and for long periods, only – instinct is to crawl into their shell until there’s a substantial break in play: think a lengthy stoppage, end of quarter, somehow miraculously getting the ball up the other end for a goal.
It was on show in the second quarter against St Kilda. The Saints had 73 percent of the term in their forward half, which meant plenty of time for North figuring out how to exit.
Sides know if they start to get North under pressure, it’s relatively easy to continue because they invite further pressure by easily retreating. Of North’s 12 rebound 50s in the second quarter, all 12 avoided the corridor – nine along what’s classed as the boundary, and the other three the wing (in between the boundary and middle).
It clearly wasn’t how North set out to play, because in the third quarter, when the inside 50 count was similar to the second, North’s ball movement was noticeably more aggressive. They’d clearly been reminded on what the plan was, and the result was significantly less time trapped deep in defence.
Even allowing for St Kilda’s extra scoring in the third quarter, the difference was too large to solely be down to the three extra goals and reset opportunities:
| Second Quarter | Inside 50s | Time in forward half % |
| St Kilda | 17 | 73.3% |
| North Melbourne | 6 | 26.7% |
| Third Quarter | Inside 50s | Time in forward half % |
| St Kilda | 15 | 54.6% |
| North Melbourne | 7 | 45.4% |
Although it was far, far from perfect after half time – obviously, given St Kilda kicked six goals in the third! – that North were able to (relatively) reset was a positive. In the bigger picture, not rolling the second quarter mentality into the third was important to see.
The next step is making sure the team doesn’t sink into quicksand for an elongated period before the reset. Much easier said than done, particularly next week against the Giants on the road.
Zane Duursma’s ‘progression’
If we go right back to last year’s pre-season game against the Saints, where we saw Duursma for the first time against AFL opposition, my words were to the effect of ‘slow burn, will take some time, doesn’t have the defensive principles yet’.
Nearly two years in, those defensive principles – aka work without the ball – still aren’t there. It’s (probably) why he’s spending some time behind the ball, to try and fast track the knowledge base and broaden Duursma from a player who has almost exclusively been, ‘see ball, go for ball’, into someone who has more IQ than what’s been on display at AFL level so far.
The talent level is undoubtedly there, because the flashes from time to time catch the eye. But the difference between Duursma and someone like McKercher is the latter has a far greater understanding of his role and how to execute, which rounds out his game.
Until Duursma puts that together with his talent level, keeping the entire field in mind instead of blinkers blocking everything but him and the ball on offence, he’ll continue to either be a fringe player, or provide inconsistent moments at best. The next pre-season could be career-defining, because his current level of progression isn’t what was expected.
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For those who have missed it, the last five Notebook entries on The Shinboner, plus…
The 2025 Team Structures Page
Hawthorn’s shift, St Kilda’s list approach: Round 20’s Notebook
Brisbane testing tweaks, a crack in Collingwood’s midfield: Round 18’s Notebook
Essendon’s changes, Adelaide in the air: Round 17’s Notebook
Brisbane, Essendon, Geelong, GWS health checks: Round 16’s Notebook
Adelaide, Hawthorn, Melbourne, West Coast health checks: Round 15’s Notebook
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Personnel changes in the last three weeks
Suddenly with only three games left in the season, a shortlist of things I’d like to see if fitness and general availability permits:
– A game where Charlie Comben and Wil Dawson both play back; the third key defender alongside those two can be anyone
– Geordie Payne to make his debut; at time of writing I haven’t seen his six-goal game in the VFL but will have by mid-week
– A game for Matt Whitlock up forward; this issue could be forced by the way Nick Larkey struggled to move in the last quarter
– Some (more) spot on-ball minutes for Finn O’Sullivan; in time he feels like the glue of an on-ball unit
Often by this stage of the season the general mood can be characterised as the last day at school. For North in 2025, these last three games should be treated like a last chance study session before an important exam.