Opinion Commentary & Media VI

[TennisPlayerAndy]

If you looked up obsession in any dictionary you’d find a description of Caro writing about us.

 

[Mute Point]

She’s not wrong though

From what I've been told by someone with intimate knowledge of what's happening internally, most of what she's said here is on the money

 

[the flying ham]

Here tis Hojuman.

The trouble at North: why club chiefs should be nervous​

By Caroline Wilson​

June 25, 2022 — 5.00am

That Geoff Walsh has been commandeered back to North Melbourne to conduct a month-long review of the underperforming football club does not bode well for David Noble and his future there.
Nor can it be of much comfort to club chief executive Ben Amarfio that he is nominally working alongside the veteran administrator in attempting to make sense of the Kangaroos’ dysfunctional football operation.
The Walsh “review” - a term conspicuously avoided in the club’s carefully worded Thursday media release - came about through a series of conversations at board level primarily between director and former captain Anthony Stevens and Walsh, his former CEO. As the internal finger pointing intensified recently, Stevens saw Walsh and his combination of fresh eyes and Shinboner DNA as the right man to make sense of the blame game.

Under pressure: North Melbourne coach David Noble.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES

Top-level conversations at the competition’s head office - where North Melbourne’s woes remain front of mind - also identified Walsh as a potential fixer, recalling the lengthy review he oversaw at Carlton last year, which led to a football restructure and the departure of coach David Teague and chief executive Cain Liddle. (Although the AFL on Thursday quickly removed him from its working group setting up the football framework for a Tasmanian team, fearing a set of potential conflicts.)

The most significant wheel was set in motion late last month after Walsh contacted Kangaroos president Sonja Hood. He was visiting New York and had just read about the mass exodus of the club’s recruiting staff as the heavy on-field losses were piling up. The two last worked together on the North executive in 2016 before Walsh moved to the top football job at Collingwood and Walsh told Hood he would like to help his old club.
It won’t take Walsh long to understand that North is a club divided. To be brutal, the Kangaroos have never really recovered from the forced retirements of 2016 - and Walsh played a big part there - when a devastated Brent Harvey led a quartet of experienced teammates out the door.
The strategic missteps have continued, and it was symbolic this week that Harvey - who North continue to employ in a part-time coaching role and as a runner - stated on social media his support for the prodigious and turbulent No. 1 draft pick Jason Horne-Francis and his decision to defer his commitment to the club. This is not the work of a united team.
The lack of unity exacerbated by the heavy defeats have also been accentuated by North’s decision to bring in another outside consultant. It seems extraordinary that Paul Roos with his leadership man Gerard Murphy remain on the payroll. Roos has spent a large part of the year in Hawaii, and his ongoing value is being questioned by senior people at the club.
Roos was a key player in Noble’s appointment but as the struggling coach works to build a relationship with and improve the performances of his disenchanted players the retired premiership coach who helped deliver him is rarely a physical presence at the club.

So, Walsh will walk into his old club on Monday to observe a coach with whom he has no relationship and who did not see him coming. In a four-round crash course he will watch the dynamics of the coaches’ box and attempt to make sense of the disconnection between coaches, players and the remaining recruiters and football bosses who partly inherited this mess, but have shown no ability to fix it.

North DNA: Geoff Walsh.CREDITARRIAN TRAYNOR

Everyone in football knows the way this normally ends. Noble, who in his final year as football boss at Brisbane seemed set on a path to become a club chief executive, chose to become a senior coach instead and to date appears to have made the wrong choice. The North coaching group can rightly blame list management and recruiting, but Noble has not managed to win over his players nor unite them, and he is unlikely to remain at the club beyond 2022.
Nor is there unity among the North executive. Amarfio will not like this, but it remains difficult to reconcile his physical absenteeism from the club during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis as Rhyce Shaw’s struggles intensified and rookie football bosses including Brady Rawlings had to oversee the unhappy Queensland hub. Rawlings, whose title is head of football talent, has taken a less senior role than originally envisaged, but his performance, too, will come under scrutiny.
North blame the AFL for poaching the club’s administrative rising star Laura Kane and the AFL blames North for not appointing Kane to the top football job when they had the chance. Either way the club’s football operation looks thin - a situation underlined by the recruitment of Walsh as another outside consultant. Relatively new football operations boss Daniel McPherson had already undertaken a football review over the bye round, but clearly more work and tougher decisions were required.

Walsh’s return to North in a third reincarnation - he first joined the club almost three decades ago - might well be brief. He heads overseas at the start of August but could return by the start of September should he be required to help oversee the change that seems inevitable.
Some experienced North heads believe Walsh left behind a mess in 2016, although he cannot be blamed for the disasters overseen by the subsequent five years under the Ben Buckley presidency. And Carlton’s success to date in 2022, along with the manner in which he and Graham Lowe and Matthew Pavlich conducted the Blues’ review, means he comes highly recommended.
Hood, who was running North’s community initiative, The Huddle when Walsh last ran the football operation, has spent the first months of her presidency consulting key North figures, past and present, as well as key players across the AFL. She should be seen as one of the few Kangaroos bosses secure in her role by virtue of her short time in the job, although this is no honeymoon period.
The appointment of Walsh is her first big play, and it looms as a strategic hit job of historic proportions.

An absolute word soup combining happenstance to create obscure and tenuous links. I don't take the media personally, its a saturated industry driven by clicks. And this is a click bait article from the chief editor of a major publisher. It's rubbish.

 

[TennisPlayerAndy]

‘A strategic hit job of historic proportions’.

There is now no hyperbole left in the entire universe for any other journalists to make use of.

 

[the flying ham]

From what I've been told by someone with intimate knowledge of what's happening internally, most of what she's said here is on the money

There are considerable facts in the piece, just that they have been combined to form an opinion piece. It's nothing more than opinion

 

[Gumble Frankieton]

I'm betting that Mr Wilson is very happy we're a basket case. Could you just imagine having to mount that troll??

I feel dirty and need to have a shower now :stern look

Maybe they use a teaser pony?

 

[Masked Avenger]

There are considerable facts in the piece, just that they have been combined to form an opinion piece. It's nothing more than opinion

I'm happy the acid is on the operation because it would be plain stupid to think it's humming along. It ain't. Clearly room for improvement.

But what's not proven is this thesis that Caroline Wilson and others are peddling that there is some gotcha link between our on field performances and tensions within the Club.

Seriously, where's the evidence for that?

There should be tensions given our on field performances but I would have thought a more obvious and less exciting explanation is that we've got an inexperienced Senior Coach leading the most ineffectual and bog average collection of senior players the Club has had since the 1960's. That's what's killing us.

Also, some of her assertions do require serious challenge though. Tying our current issues back to 2016 when we turfed Boomer and others. Yeah right. Boomer's so disenchanted with the joint he's decided to hang around for the last 6 years.

Suggesting also that Boomer's comments around JHF's contract status is a sign of a Club divided. A fairer bet is that he said it to reassure fans that there's a context around why young players defer talks. She is implying that Boomer is willing JHF away. It's complete garbage.

The Club's made mistakes, including letting go the wrong senior players in the last couple of years, but geez it showed a lot of guts in cutting the way it did in 2020. Anyone who thinks a Club of our stature will survive long term on mid table finishes are kidding themselves.

 

[Hojuman]

HQ has said it’s not going to happen. Barely made any noise at all because it wouldn’t drive clicks.

I don't think it will happen either Val.

 

[the flying ham]

I'm happy the acid is on the operation because it would be plain stupid to think it's humming along. It ain't. Clearly room for improvement.

But what's not proven is this thesis that Caroline Wilson and others are peddling that there is some gotcha link between our on field performances and tensions within the Club.

Seriously, where's the evidence for that?

There should be tensions given our on field performances but I would have thought a more obvious and less exciting explanation is that we've got an inexperienced Senior Coach leading the most ineffectual and bog average collection of senior players the Club has had since the 1960's. That's what's killing us.

Also, some of her assertions do require serious challenge though. Tying our current issues back to 2016 when we turfed Boomer and others. Yeah right. Boomer's so disenchanted with the joint he's decided to hang around for the last 6 years.

Suggesting also that Boomer's comments around JHF's contract status is a sign of a Club divided. A fairer bet is that he said it to reassure fans that there's a context around why young players defer talks. She is implying that Boomer is willing JHF away. It's complete garbage.

The Club's made mistakes, including letting go the wrong senior players in the last couple of years, but geez it showed a lot of guts in cutting the way it in 2020. Anyone who thinks a Club of our stature will survive long term on mid table finishes are kidding themselves.

T

Couldn't have said it better myself! Walsh reviewing the club and its operations is a great thing

 

[Devington]

Far better than the crap she spouts on TV and Radio, but once again the framing she uses to push a narrative is created out of pure ill intent.

The fact she uses Boomer defending JHF to emphasize just how divided and dysfunctional we are is pretty ****ing telling. Club legend defends our under fire young star boohoo cry me a ****ing river.

 

[teethmeetsflesh]

Notice how Gil didn't rule out relocating clubs North of Melbourne!?!?!? More on Footy Classified next week.

 

[Tas]

Notice how Gil didn't rule out relocating clubs North of Melbourne!?!?!? More on Footy Classified next week.

AFL doesn't have that power.

 

[Shinboner roo]

Staring Michael D... North Melbourne football club

 

[DarkPhoenix]

AFL is just trying to find ways NOT to give Tassie a license.

New stadium IN Hobart? Where exactly are they going to put it? Hobart is small as capitals go, and anyone whose been there will tell you that the available space has been pretty well used up. Theres a heap of drama at the moment with UTAS buying out old buildings to use because theres no real place for them to build, there isn't room for a new stadium.

The only place I can think of that they could potentially put a new stadium is Queen's Domain, and that won't happen.

 

[Tas]

Let's unpack this shitshow...

That Geoff Walsh has been commandeered back to North Melbourne to conduct a month-long review of the underperforming football club does not bode well for David Noble and his future there.

She kind of makes it sound like he was compelled or forced then later says he approached us...

Nor can it be of much comfort to club chief executive Ben Amarfio that he is nominally working alongside the veteran administrator in attempting to make sense of the Kangaroos’ dysfunctional football operation.

The club said in the media release: "Reporting to the Board and CEO Ben Amarfio, Walsh will work alongside coach David Noble, and football department heads Daniel McPherson and Brady Rawlings, from Monday, June 27."

Walsh is working alongside Noble, not Ben. Walsh reports to Ben and the Board. CEO plays a role in determining the performance of the football department but ultimately it is the Board's role to determine the coach's performance and if they should hire/fire/extend a coach and by extension the assistants he has chosen to work with.

The Walsh “review” - a term conspicuously avoided in the club’s carefully worded Thursday media release - came about through a series of conversations at board level primarily between director and former captain Anthony Stevens and Walsh, his former CEO. As the internal finger pointing intensified recently, Stevens saw Walsh and his combination of fresh eyes and Shinboner DNA as the right man to make sense of the blame game.

"Walsh will draw on the work recently completed by McPherson over the bye round in reviewing the operations of the football department.

As part of his role, Walsh will be involved on match day, during the week at the club and will advise on the process of building out the club’s list management team."

From Ben: "We will lean on Geoff’s experience as we look to improve all aspects of the football program and how we operate – from coaching and development, list management, preparation and performance, player welfare, culture and environment."

Anyone you bring is going to review the operation, our release even said he will be drawing on the completed internal review.

Top-level conversations at the competition’s head office - where North Melbourne’s woes remain front of mind - also identified Walsh as a potential fixer, recalling the lengthy review he oversaw at Carlton last year, which led to a football restructure and the departure of coach David Teague and chief executive Cain Liddle. (Although the AFL on Thursday quickly removed him from its working group setting up the football framework for a Tasmanian team, fearing a set of potential conflicts.)

So he is qualified and has had results recently. Plus we have retained Paul Roos for whatever the **** he is doing. How is this a negative? More heads with recent results is a bad thing?

The most significant wheel was set in motion late last month after Walsh contacted Kangaroos president Sonja Hood. He was visiting New York and had just read about the mass exodus of the club’s recruiting staff as the heavy on-field losses were piling up. The two last worked together on the North executive in 2016 before Walsh moved to the top football job at Collingwood and Walsh told Hood he would like to help his old club.

Didn't she just say it was a result of conversations with Stevo? Compulsive liars have a problem with consistency. I don't think anyone at North talks to Caro and Walsh wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire.

It won’t take Walsh long to understand that North is a club divided. To be brutal, the Kangaroos have never really recovered from the forced retirements of 2016 - and Walsh played a big part there - when a devastated Brent Harvey led a quartet of experienced teammates out the door.

I thought Harvey should have played on, it was fringe players who should have been cut earlier. But that wasn't our problem, it was the poor development and the lack of replacements for people we moved on and the type of players we recruited. When you draft kids that are 60-70kg they are going to take years of development to get to AFL standard just physically speaking. We don't have an AFL standard matured body midfield. List management isn't the fault of Ben, it is part of Noble's responsibility as the head coach to oversee player development.

The strategic missteps have continued, and it was symbolic this week that Harvey - who North continue to employ in a part-time coaching role and as a runner - stated on social media his support for the prodigious and turbulent No. 1 draft pick Jason Horne-Francis and his decision to defer his commitment to the club. This is not the work of a united team.

All Harvey said was that his manager wouldn't advise him to right now, what he said made sense, he would earn much more if he put it off until end of this season or next year, much like GWS had to pay a premium to hold onto Kelly when we put pressure on them. It not only made sense but it hopefully takes some pressure off him, people think not extending right now means he is going to leave and the media have been pushing that narrative that he is unhappy and wants to leave.

The lack of unity exacerbated by the heavy defeats have also been accentuated by North’s decision to bring in another outside consultant. It seems extraordinary that Paul Roos with his leadership man Gerard Murphy remain on the payroll. Roos has spent a large part of the year in Hawaii, and his ongoing value is being questioned by senior people at the club.

Yeah, I don't know how much help he can be when he isn't here, it doesn't mean there is a lack of unity, I get the impression that the club doesn't want to rock up to 2025 and find out we aren't on the right path because you lose development time you will never get back, the next couple of years are critical for our club and I think the club just wants to make sure we are on the right track. The issues we have had this year with the on-field performances and the way the players are going would be a concern for any club.

Roos was a key player in Noble’s appointment but as the struggling coach works to build a relationship with and improve the performances of his disenchanted players the retired premiership coach who helped deliver him is rarely a physical presence at the club.

So, Walsh will walk into his old club on Monday to observe a coach with whom he has no relationship and who did not see him coming. In a four-round crash course he will watch the dynamics of the coaches’ box and attempt to make sense of the disconnection between coaches, players and the remaining recruiters and football bosses who partly inherited this mess, but have shown no ability to fix it.

I think we made it pretty obvious when we appointed him that Noble is an inexperienced coach so would need help in the early stage, Roos was there helping him last year but he isn't now. I think Walsh is largely a fill-in to give that assistance/guidance. Noble thinks 80-90% we do someone external will agree with, but might have a few things we could do differently that could improve us. If we did nothing the media would bitch that we hung him out to dry, we bring someone, they make up bullshit anyway. The only winning scenario is for the team to play better footy.

Everyone in football knows the way this normally ends. Noble, who in his final year as football boss at Brisbane seemed set on a path to become a club chief executive, chose to become a senior coach instead and to date appears to have made the wrong choice.

People would have come to the same conclusion with the last 3-4 premiership coaches after 1.5 years into their coaching career. It is rare for a coach to walk into a really strong team that is performing well and is doing everything well off-field, Chris Scott the only one that springs to mind. Most new coaches are appointed to clubs that are on the skids and it takes time to turn it around.

The North coaching group can rightly blame list management and recruiting, but Noble has not managed to win over his players nor unite them, and he is unlikely to remain at the club beyond 2022.

I think the club would like to avoid going with coach #4 in 5 years. I think the club would have preferred Clarkson and offered him the gig before we appointed Shaw but he said no and he wasn't available when we appointed Noble. I think it is premature to judge him. I don't know if he will be a good coach or not, but I think we could definitely structure and play better with what we have at our disposal.

Nor is there unity among the North executive. Amarfio will not like this, but it remains difficult to reconcile his physical absenteeism from the club during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis as Rhyce Shaw’s struggles intensified and rookie football bosses including Brady Rawlings had to oversee the unhappy Queensland hub.

I don't think many CEOs went over, did they? They still have a business to run. The main problem with 2020 was not providing him with enough support, it doesn't mean Ben needed to go there and hold his hand, someone could have called him and asked for help/advice.

Rawlings, whose title is head of football talent, has taken a less senior role than originally envisaged, but his performance, too, will come under scrutiny.

I think he has been trying to do too many things, but he also came in when it was clown-town. I think we have as a club dropped the ball on list management/development and it needs to be addressed. It is a results based industry though, success or failure can only be judged in time.

North blame the AFL for poaching the club’s administrative rising star Laura Kane and the AFL blames North for not appointing Kane to the top football job when they had the chance.

I don't think Laura was the difference between success or failure, why is this even in the article? What about our janitor? We also lost our garden gnome, this is why Thomas can't get a kick. C'mon.

Either way the club’s football operation looks thin - a situation underlined by the recruitment of Walsh as another outside consultant. Relatively new football operations boss Daniel McPherson had already undertaken a football review over the bye round, but clearly more work and tougher decisions were required.

All clubs do internal reviews every year. If you are on the bottom of the ladder, you should be doing whatever you can to get better.

Walsh’s return to North in a third reincarnation - he first joined the club almost three decades ago - might well be brief. He heads overseas at the start of August but could return by the start of September should he be required to help oversee the change that seems inevitable.
Some experienced North heads believe Walsh left behind a mess in 2016, although he cannot be blamed for the disasters overseen by the subsequent five years under the Ben Buckley presidency. And Carlton’s success to date in 2022, along with the manner in which he and Graham Lowe and Matthew Pavlich conducted the Blues’ review, means he comes highly recommended.

Nobody is talking to Caro other than probably some dinosaurs like PDR or Aylett who have no clue what is going on either.

Hood, who was running North’s community initiative, The Huddle when Walsh last ran the football operation, has spent the first months of her presidency consulting key North figures, past and present, as well as key players across the AFL. She should be seen as one of the few Kangaroos bosses secure in her role by virtue of her short time in the job, although this is no honeymoon period.
The appointment of Walsh is her first big play, and it looms as a strategic hit job of historic proportions.

Nobody gives a shit what she thinks about Hood or anyone else, the only reason she wrote that article is for clicks, no other reason, it isn't newsworthy in any way, she has just regurgitated the press release and found a way to make it negative because negative news stories attract clicks.

If we were doing nothing we would get blasted for doing nothing, do something blasted for doing something. You can never win with these people because there is no right or wrong, just an opportunity to get ad revenue.

 

[Hojuman]

Let's unpack this shitshow...



She kind of makes it sound like he was compelled or forced then later says he approached us...



The club said in the media release: "Reporting to the Board and CEO Ben Amarfio, Walsh will work alongside coach David Noble, and football department heads Daniel McPherson and Brady Rawlings, from Monday, June 27."

Walsh is working alongside Noble, not Ben. Walsh reports to Ben and the Board. CEO plays a role in determining the performance of the football department but ultimately it is the Board's role to determine the coach's performance and if they should hire/fire/extend a coach and by extension the assistants he has chosen to work with.



"Walsh will draw on the work recently completed by McPherson over the bye round in reviewing the operations of the football department.

As part of his role, Walsh will be involved on match day, during the week at the club and will advise on the process of building out the club’s list management team."

From Ben: "We will lean on Geoff’s experience as we look to improve all aspects of the football program and how we operate – from coaching and development, list management, preparation and performance, player welfare, culture and environment."

Anyone you bring is going to review the operation, our release even said he will be drawing on the completed internal review.




So he is qualified and has had results recently. Plus we have retained Paul Roos for whatever the * he is doing. How is this a negative? More heads with recent results is a bad thing?



Didn't she just say it was a result of conversations with Stevo? Compulsive liars have a problem with consistency. I don't think anyone at North talks to Caro and Walsh wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire.



I thought Harvey should have played on, it was fringe players who should have been cut earlier. But that wasn't our problem, it was the poor development and the lack of replacements for people we moved on and the type of players we recruited. When you draft kids that are 60-70kg they are going to take years of development to get to AFL standard just physically speaking. We don't have an AFL standard matured body midfield. List management isn't the fault of Ben, it is part of Noble's responsibility as the head coach to oversee player development.



All Harvey said was that his manager wouldn't advise him to right now, what he said made sense, he would earn much more if he put it off until end of this season or next year, much like GWS had to pay a premium to hold onto Kelly when we put pressure on them. It not only made sense but it hopefully takes some pressure off him, people think not extending right now means he is going to leave and the media have been pushing that narrative that he is unhappy and wants to leave.



Yeah, I don't know how much help he can be when he isn't here, it doesn't mean there is a lack of unity, I get the impression that the club doesn't want to rock up to 2025 and find out we aren't on the right path because you lose development time you will never get back, the next couple of years are critical for our club and I think the club just wants to make sure we are on the right track. The issues we have had this year with the on-field performances and the way the players are going would be a concern for any club.



I think we made it pretty obvious when we appointed him that Noble is an inexperienced coach so would need help in the early stage, Roos was there helping him last year but he isn't now. I think Walsh is largely a fill-in to give that assistance/guidance. Noble thinks 80-90% we do someone external will agree with, but might have a few things we could do differently that could improve us. If we did nothing the media would bitch that we hung him out to dry, we bring someone, they make up bullshit anyway. The only winning scenario is for the team to play better footy.



People would have come to the same conclusion with the last 3-4 premiership coaches after 1.5 years into their coaching career. It is rare for a coach to walk into a really strong team that is performing well and is doing everything well off-field, Chris Scott the only one that springs to mind. Most new coaches are appointed to clubs that are on the skids and it takes time to turn it around.



I think the club would like to avoid going with coach #4 in 5 years. I think the club would have preferred Clarkson and offered him the gig before we appointed Shaw but he said no and he wasn't available when we appointed Noble. I think it is premature to judge him. I don't know if he will be a good coach or not, but I think we could definitely structure and play better with what we have at our disposal.



I don't think many CEOs went over, did they? They still have a business to run. The main problem with 2020 was not providing him with enough support, it doesn't mean Ben needed to go there and hold his hand, someone could have called him and asked for help/advice.



I think he has been trying to do too many things, but he also came in when it was clown-town. I think we have as a club dropped the ball on list management/development and it needs to be addressed. It is a results based industry though, success or failure can only be judged in time.



I don't think Laura was the difference between success or failure, why is this even in the article? What about our janitor? We also lost our garden gnome, this is why Thomas can't get a kick. C'mon.



All clubs do internal reviews every year. If you are on the bottom of the ladder, you should be doing whatever you can to get better.



Nobody is talking to Caro other than probably some dinosaurs like PDR or Aylett who have no clue what is going on either.



Nobody gives a s**t what she thinks about Hood or anyone else, the only reason she wrote that article is for clicks, no other reason, it isn't newsworthy in any way, she has just regurgitated the press release and found a way to make it negative because negative news stories attract clicks.

If we were doing nothing we would get blasted for doing nothing, do something blasted for doing something. You can never win with these people because there is no right or wrong, just an opportunity to get ad revenue.

Tas, can you reveal your sorecez ?

 

[koshari]

Will give her credit though, 8 or 9 paragraphs of complete drivel and she has resisted the temptation to mention JHF (although she did wFfle about boomers comments re JHF. )

 

[Tas]

Tas, can you reveal your sorecez ?

My source is Mr Bullshito.

 

[gokangas]

Let's unpack this shitshow...



She kind of makes it sound like he was compelled or forced then later says he approached us...



The club said in the media release: "Reporting to the Board and CEO Ben Amarfio, Walsh will work alongside coach David Noble, and football department heads Daniel McPherson and Brady Rawlings, from Monday, June 27."

Walsh is working alongside Noble, not Ben. Walsh reports to Ben and the Board. CEO plays a role in determining the performance of the football department but ultimately it is the Board's role to determine the coach's performance and if they should hire/fire/extend a coach and by extension the assistants he has chosen to work with.



"Walsh will draw on the work recently completed by McPherson over the bye round in reviewing the operations of the football department.

As part of his role, Walsh will be involved on match day, during the week at the club and will advise on the process of building out the club’s list management team."

From Ben: "We will lean on Geoff’s experience as we look to improve all aspects of the football program and how we operate – from coaching and development, list management, preparation and performance, player welfare, culture and environment."

Anyone you bring is going to review the operation, our release even said he will be drawing on the completed internal review.




So he is qualified and has had results recently. Plus we have retained Paul Roos for whatever the * he is doing. How is this a negative? More heads with recent results is a bad thing?



Didn't she just say it was a result of conversations with Stevo? Compulsive liars have a problem with consistency. I don't think anyone at North talks to Caro and Walsh wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire.



I thought Harvey should have played on, it was fringe players who should have been cut earlier. But that wasn't our problem, it was the poor development and the lack of replacements for people we moved on and the type of players we recruited. When you draft kids that are 60-70kg they are going to take years of development to get to AFL standard just physically speaking. We don't have an AFL standard matured body midfield. List management isn't the fault of Ben, it is part of Noble's responsibility as the head coach to oversee player development.



All Harvey said was that his manager wouldn't advise him to right now, what he said made sense, he would earn much more if he put it off until end of this season or next year, much like GWS had to pay a premium to hold onto Kelly when we put pressure on them. It not only made sense but it hopefully takes some pressure off him, people think not extending right now means he is going to leave and the media have been pushing that narrative that he is unhappy and wants to leave.



Yeah, I don't know how much help he can be when he isn't here, it doesn't mean there is a lack of unity, I get the impression that the club doesn't want to rock up to 2025 and find out we aren't on the right path because you lose development time you will never get back, the next couple of years are critical for our club and I think the club just wants to make sure we are on the right track. The issues we have had this year with the on-field performances and the way the players are going would be a concern for any club.



I think we made it pretty obvious when we appointed him that Noble is an inexperienced coach so would need help in the early stage, Roos was there helping him last year but he isn't now. I think Walsh is largely a fill-in to give that assistance/guidance. Noble thinks 80-90% we do someone external will agree with, but might have a few things we could do differently that could improve us. If we did nothing the media would bitch that we hung him out to dry, we bring someone, they make up bullshit anyway. The only winning scenario is for the team to play better footy.



People would have come to the same conclusion with the last 3-4 premiership coaches after 1.5 years into their coaching career. It is rare for a coach to walk into a really strong team that is performing well and is doing everything well off-field, Chris Scott the only one that springs to mind. Most new coaches are appointed to clubs that are on the skids and it takes time to turn it around.



I think the club would like to avoid going with coach #4 in 5 years. I think the club would have preferred Clarkson and offered him the gig before we appointed Shaw but he said no and he wasn't available when we appointed Noble. I think it is premature to judge him. I don't know if he will be a good coach or not, but I think we could definitely structure and play better with what we have at our disposal.



I don't think many CEOs went over, did they? They still have a business to run. The main problem with 2020 was not providing him with enough support, it doesn't mean Ben needed to go there and hold his hand, someone could have called him and asked for help/advice.



I think he has been trying to do too many things, but he also came in when it was clown-town. I think we have as a club dropped the ball on list management/development and it needs to be addressed. It is a results based industry though, success or failure can only be judged in time.



I don't think Laura was the difference between success or failure, why is this even in the article? What about our janitor? We also lost our garden gnome, this is why Thomas can't get a kick. C'mon.



All clubs do internal reviews every year. If you are on the bottom of the ladder, you should be doing whatever you can to get better.



Nobody is talking to Caro other than probably some dinosaurs like PDR or Aylett who have no clue what is going on either.



Nobody gives a s**t what she thinks about Hood or anyone else, the only reason she wrote that article is for clicks, no other reason, it isn't newsworthy in any way, she has just regurgitated the press release and found a way to make it negative because negative news stories attract clicks.

If we were doing nothing we would get blasted for doing nothing, do something blasted for doing something. You can never win with these people because there is no right or wrong, just an opportunity to get ad revenue.

Your review lacks detail - get serious.

 

[sutcliffe's hotel]

I would respect the article more if there was some attempt at fair analysis, rather than one way traffic down hate street.

Surely, decent analysis requires at least a consideration of the alternative explanation or some examples that provide nuance and context.

 

[koshari]

I would respect the article more if there was some attempt at fair analysis, rather than one way traffic down hate street.

Surely, decent analysis requires at least a consideration of the alternative explanation or some examples that provide nuance and context.

Analysis..... Surely you give the author far to much credibility?

 

[giantroo]

 

[muttley45]

Whose turn for the media spotlight/blowtorch this week , Saint's, *, or us again ?

 

[the flying ham]

Going to avoid playing the man here, but I will say what sort of ethical standard does the league apply to its own media department. A guy on their payroll assassinating clubs and personnel in the leagues media releases. It's a disgrace.

 

[koshari]

Going to avoid playing the man here, but I will say what sort of ethical standard does the league apply to its own media department. A guy on their payroll assassinating clubs and personnel in the leagues media releases. It's a disgrace.

Really , rightly or wrongly its simply part of the parcel of being crap, godees copped it , carlton same, the only salvation is moving up the ladder, sadly for us thsts in the distant future so the show goes on.