In my head, a streak-busting win over Essendon arrived in more glorious fashion. A string of highlight reel plays, emphatically putting a full stop on a decade’s worth of losses, perhaps incorporating past frustrations.
(At one point a long time ago, in official social media colours, there was a plan to eventually incorporate Cale Hooker’s hair ruffle of Dan Nielson into a North win celebration. But that is another story for another time.)
In reality, it was a little more low-key, the plays on a highlight reel probably for the wrong reasons. With an unorthodox game flow, there’s a bit of explaining to do for why that happened, along with some positional tweaks and highlighting the last quarter.
Ideally at some point during the week there’ll be deeper dives on Finn O’Sullivan and Luke Parker’s games as well. Until then let’s jump around from topic to topic and touch on a few different things.
An atypical game
There were just 61 stoppages in North’s win over Essendon. If the number feels abnormally low to you, then your instinct is correct.
Since the start of 2021, there have only been four games with fewer stoppages. Four! They all occurred in 2021 or 2022, making Saturday night’s total of 61 the lowest in any game since Round 2, 2022.
It goes a long way to explaining why we saw some of what we saw…
Explaining the game flow
Through the early stages of 2026, Essendon have been obscenely vulnerable to any kind of opposition spread at a decent tempo, whether over the top of their lines or around.
They’ve been overloading players in small areas, which has allowed opposition to move around or over them after a couple of clean possessions, or capitalising quickly after turnover. Although this one-two tweet combo was specifically referring to last week v Port Adelaide, the basic principles still apply:
But what it does mean is if Essendon’s effort can be high enough to overcome some of their process handcuffs, or the opposition isn’t at the level to take full advantage of those handcuffs, the game can quickly turn very scrappy, very quickly.
Sometimes ‘scrappy’ means unforced errors, which we saw plenty of. For instance there can be a passage where Essendon gain possession in the middle, with a numerical advantage, and then 15 seconds later the ball is out of bounds in North Melbourne’s forward pocket:
It can also mean the overcompensation and defensive overload in certain areas makes it really tricky to counter offensively with any cleanliness:
Because North’s tempo in possession this year has largely been sedate, they weren’t able to take the opportunities to make the most of Essendon’s vulnerabilities. When it did happen, it was largely from an over-the-top method rather than a lot of width, along these lines:
When you combine Essendon’s flaws with North Melbourne’s limited ability to take advantage of those flaws – at least when it wasn’t presented gift wrapped with some of the inexplicable turnovers – that’s why we see the game flow we saw.
Four of North’s five third quarter goals started from:
1) A horrendous Zach Reid turnover in-board
2) A needlessly risky, low percentage Zach Merrett kick
3) Archer Day-Wicks trying to bulldoze his way through a tackle while support surrounded him
4) A Jacob Farrow kick-in turnover
A couple of goals on the other end of those turnovers – notably the Cooper Trembath and Tom Blamires finishes – were quality. Nevertheless the start of the possession chain was handed to North, allowing them to establish a substantial three quarter time lead.
Before we get to the final quarter, let’s take a detour.
Positional shifts
There were a handful of intriguing tweaks for individuals.
While Aidan Corr and Callum Coleman-Jones for Griffin Logue and Jack Darling were straight forward, George Wardlaw essentially coming in for Jacob Konstanty necessitated a reshuffle.
What we saw – to start – was Caleb Daniel at half forward, which in my notes was the first time Daniel had ever started a game in the forward half for North. Colby McKercher* started at half back with spot midfield minutes as O’Sullivan’s** role on Zach Merrett forced in-game movement.
While that is McKercher’s best role, it was impressive how the unit as a whole was able to coordinate the movement required by O’Sullivan’s role and Merrett’s attempt to shake it, all without conceding too many glaring structural errors. Disposal, a little different story, but nevertheless it’s a general sign of maturity we haven’t seen much of in recent memory.
(*Note 1: As mentioned in last week’s post, I’m operating under the assumption McKercher’s role against West Coast was due to continue as a forward-mid until Logue’s early injury. At least until someone points me in the direction of an explanation I missed)
(**Note 2: Ideally at some point in the week we’ll go through O’Sullivan’s game with a more thorough lens. It’s the least he deserves.)
Then after half time Blamires moved up to the wing and Daniel returned to his customary half back position, meaning Jy Simpkin played more of a high half forward role. It makes for an intriguing discussion for next week’s team.
Assuming Riley Hardeman’s VFL game today was the standard ‘get some minutes under your belt please’ before coming in for Good Friday, there’s a bit of a squeeze happening. The nanosecond Hardeman is ready to play AFL; he’s in the team.
Elsewhere, the discussion of how to get the most out of the 23rd player continues. Against Essendon it was Callum Coleman-Jones playing basically as a pseudo-sub with just 35 percent game time.
Considering there’s George Wardlaw on carefully managed game time, Aidan Corr with a lighter load on return, and Lachy Dovaston nursed through his start to AFL life, it risks leaving a heavy responsibility to too few. Considering Tristan Xerri will most likely be sanctioned for his incident with Andrew McGrath, the dialogue will evolve again during the week.
For all of that though, there was one player in a relatively new role who shouldered his heavy responsibility brilliantly against Essendon.
Luke Parker, adult in the room
Yakety Sax, Benny Hill theme, call it whatever you like. While that was figuratively blaring all over Marvel for the duration of Saturday, one of the few people to keep his head was Luke Parker.
The stat sheet looks nice: 33 disposals, lots of marks, a handful of intercept possessions. And yet all those numbers are irrelevant to his actual impact.
If there was an iso camera specifically on Parker, it would have made essential viewing as a coaching tape. His movement – both to help others and demand possession himself – was invaluable. There was the constant chat to his teammates, equal parts constructive, uplifting, and controlling emotions.
And then there were the moments where he simply took control of the defensive group and dictated how everything would unfold. It needs a deeper dive into the tape to see what broadcast view picked up compared to what was missed, but at the ground it was a masterclass of leadership.
The last quarter
All the above, pending extra deep dives on O’Sullivan and Parker in the near future, brings us to the last quarter.
With the game well in hand, North made the same mistake from last year’s game against Carlton at the MCG – putting the cue in the rack too early.
Last year against the Blues, a 46-point lead became 11 with 35 seconds to go. Against Essendon a 36-point three quarter time lead was trimmed to 12 with 87 seconds remaining. Here we need to split the result from the process.
– Result: Win, great, hooray. Wins are fun and should be cherished.
– Process: Didn’t learn from last time, the most frustrating thing.
Sustainable results are the end product of a consistent process. The former can’t exist without the latter, and to make the same mistake after consecutive Perth trips speaks to a disconnect somewhere in the latter.
It’s not as if North needed to go full bore until the final siren. What they should have been able to do was pick the visible holes in a poor team dialling up their aggression. Instead boundary usage skyrocketed and movement slowed to a crawl from way too far out.
In turn it allowed Essendon to grow in confidence – relatively, anyway – knowing they weren’t under threat when defending and could happily play one-way football without risk of consequence.
North had a stroke of luck they were playing against Essendon and Carlton at respective low points in these games. It’s not a dice they want to roll again.