Brisbane forward Joe Daniher had a day out against North Melbourne on Friday. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES.
When this writer sat down to do North Melbourne’s season preview as part of Footyology’s popular ‘Tale of the Tape’ series back in February, something worrying stood out about the Kangaroos.
In the weaknesses section, it said: “With Ben McKay gone and Griffin Logue set to miss a huge chunk of the season due to an ACL rupture, (Charlie) Comben, Wil Dawson and Toby Pink, none of whom have ever played a senior game in defence (or a senior game at all in Dawson’s and Pink’s cases), and maybe Kallan Dawson, will have to be called upon to assist Aidan Corr.”
That’s right. North Melbourne’s defence, and more specifically its key back stocks, was a giant red flag on the eve of the season.
And unfortunately for the Kangaroos, the train wreck that most pundits could foresee from a long way out has come to fruition.
The season is only four rounds old, but opposition teams have wasted little time in dining out on North’s hopelessly undersized and outmatched backline.
In Round 1, GWS pair Jesse Hogan (six) and Jake Riccardi (three) combined for nine goals, in Round 3, Carlton duo Harry McKay (five) and Charlie Curnow (four) did the same and on Friday, Brisbane’s previously out-of-sorts tandem of Joe Daniher (five) and Eric Hipwood (three), in a total shock to absolutely nobody, returned to form.
Sadly for North’s long-suffering fans, it’s a trend that looks set to continue frequently throughout the season.
One only has to look ahead six days to identify another potentially brutal day at the office for the Kangas’ backline when they travel down the highway and somehow try to contain star Geelong key forwards Jeremy Cameron and Tom Hawkins at Kardinia Park.
If you refer back to the second paragraph of this article, one of the main reasons why North’s backline is in such a state is because it let McKay go to Essendon without adequately replacing him.
Gippsland Power product Wil Dawson obviously comes with big wraps and the No.22 pick promises to be a great get down back in the long term, but he hasn’t played a game yet, and the only other key defensive options that the Kangaroos brought in over the summer were Pink and Bigoa Nyuon, who has just the one game under his belt from his time at Richmond.
Those aren’t exactly the dependable options that Corr needed by his side to combat the league’s biggest and baddest key forwards this year.
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As it turns out, Corr, Kallan Dawson (a mid-season pick from 2022) and Pink have been tasked with doing just that, and it hasn’t worked out very well at all.
After four games, North are averaging a competition worst 118 points conceded per week.
It didn’t take long for Pink to lose his spot in the side, either, as Comben came in for just his 10th game against the Lions. Talk about a baptism of fire in defence.
One can’t help but look back at last year’s draft and think that maybe, with pick No.4, North should have opted to select the best key defensive prospect Daniel Curtin, rather than Zane Duursma.
Duursma will undoubtedly become a star of the competition, and has already shown glimpses in his first handful of games of that being the case.
But on a pure needs basis, North could have really fast-tracked the rebuilding of their decimated backline by taking Curtin as well as Wil Dawson at last year’s draft.
Instead, Curtin went to the Crows with pick eight and the rest is history. North will now have to wait until November to continue its desperately needed defensive renovations.
It was a decision that had the hallmarks of North taking midfielder Will Phillips with pick three in 2020 instead of key forward Logan McDonald who went to the Swans with the next selection.
Star North forward Nick Larkey is probably thinking to himself that the extra help of McDonald would be more than handy right about now. But the Kangaroos’ issues in attack are a another story for another day.
In fairness, the Roos’ defensive deficiencies are not all the backline’s fault, because North’s midfield, although still in its development phase, has simply not done enough to halt the flow of opposition inside-50s.
And it’s a fact that further highlights the Kangaroos’ intriguing strategy of recruiting more or less the same type of player over the last several drafts without paying enough attention to the defensive and attacking ends of the ground.
The likes of Harry Sheezel, George Wardlaw, Colby McKercher, Duursma, Tom Powell and Phillips will no doubt form a formidable core in future years, and are understandably generating some much-needed excitement for a supporter base that has only witnessed 12 wins from their last 85 matches.
But the on-field pain looks set to continue in 2024, and it’s going to take at least another season before high-end reinforcements are able to be brought in to shore up North’s backline.
