Let's review the season as painful as it will be

[amaz199]

And we can't review the season because the fluctuations in performances is so stark.

Where do you start?

 

[Cool Kangas]

Oh for goodness sake, when are we going to get better?

 

[disco_cowboy]

Hello friends (or foe), although I doubt I have too many enemies on here given the general state of affairs.

I’ve been thinking about our season as a whole since the 10 minute mark of the last quarter against hawks and this is where my heads at.

I think we’re going to be ok, although not in a timeframe most want. This is probably not news to those who pay close attention, but our team sucks.

We have some talent, and that talent will keep us competitive at times. But Larkey, zuhaar and Simpkin won’t be instrumental in our next flag push.

Clarko isn’t just a seasoned coach, he’s an operator, but he’s limited, and he won’t coach out next flag winning team. I think he knows that, I know that. He will get in into a position to start the rise, his job is to be the be kanga snr and hand over to the next pagan.

Sheezel is the future, which means we are legit in the 2nd year of a rebuild.

Don’t expect too much, it’s about 4-5 years away.

Love you all and see you next year on level 2.

 

[Masked Avenger]

My takeaways.

Senior players are terrible. Plain awful.

We need a new Captain. Singular at that.

Whatever improvement we showed in the second half of the year was due to the kids. A positive whittled away by the horror of the final two games.

Sheezel, Wardlaw, Comben, McKercher, X and LDU are holding the hopes of us all.

Arch almost belongs in that group. Amazing really.

I find the love for Corr on this Board puzzling. His bad far outweighs his good. I'd be disappointed if he's getting a regular game next year. Ditto Zurhaar. 5 years. Oh dear.

I'm hoping like hell Goater, Hardeman, W Dawson and Duursma are players. Geez they better be.

X defied everything to be our most improved player - arguably the most improved player in the comp. Well done.

2025 will be a make or break year for the likes of Ford, Curtis, Scott, Powell and Bergman - all players I've been guilty of tipping into.

Missed Logue.

Fear for Larkey. Not sure how long he can hang on without help.

Need to move past CCJ, Stephens, Sleevo and Tucker.

Need to nail our first two picks.

 

[Archer_11]

One thing really bugs me is the horrendous development of our back six. Those games where it felt like we might have turned a corner coincided with Logues return. The second he was out injured again we were crap, and when Comben went down we had played our last minute of competitive footy for the season. And lo and behold, the rot really set in around 2020 when Thompson retired.

We could be years off sure, hard to argue otherwise. But until there are a couple of 24 game gorillas down back (thanks Denis) and we can play Comben forward, I'm not sure we have a solid baseline on exactly where things are at.

 

[Duck the GOAT]

Foundation GWS 30 wins in first 100
Foundation GCS 25 wins in first 100

North 13 wins in last 100

Says it all. Absolute rabble.

Tassie are closer to a flag than us.

 

[Ashley B]

See my post

No depth

We have plenty of depth Gaso, we are in the depths of shit

 

[Gasometer]

We have plenty of depth Gaso, we are in the depths of shit

Our club is like the Angry Birds game

Pull it back, hope for the best and miss everything

 

[Gasometer]

 

[Hearts to hearts]

I’ll add my vote to Rick’s season summary.

A lot of steps forward and many stumbles back. We are investing in these coaches and having faith they can put enough structure and support around a group of talented young players that as they gain size and experience can lift the club up. We will only know in retrospect if this season has been a stepping stone in the right direction or not.

 

[The Dougster]

Foundation GWS 30 wins in first 100
Foundation GCS 25 wins in first 100

North 13 wins in last 100

Heads must roll for this. It cannot continue into next season.

 

[Gasometer]

Barrett just called for a full review from the Board as to where we are considering Clarko has been given “the keys to the place”

 

[andana]

The spirit fell out of us': Clarkson​

Spirit, mind and body

 

[gokangas]

Five years of football agony and I don't honestly see any improvement. Nothing. Most of us had hopes this year to see 6 or 7 wins. Yup. Why do we hold any hope for next year? I've paid up my membership for many, many years and will till the day I die. But this is the worst I have ever seen our club on and off the field, ever. We have certainly managed to put ourselves in a reasonable financial position but sponsorship is a major worry. No shorts sponsor for a season - unheard of. Mazda not renewing as yet - a worry. The football team? I'm not sure. Is Clarko cooked? Is Rawlings up to it? I suppose Rawlings recent draft choices are looking good but what about the rest? Our CEO has not made her mark as yet and questions are being asked. I have met her once so have no opinion. I'm not an insider but there are a few eye brows raised when you say her name. Is our culture becoming an issue? Been a few things said on BF re the club not being a happy place. All I know for sure is that the club is at its lowest ebb. It is so easy for losing to become a habit. And right now we are massive losers. I still cannot get my head around the statement by a few, including Clarko, that the players dropped their bundle after the WCE game. WTF? What did the club do about it? How can that be an excuse for the doggies and hawks total capitulation? If the off field folk can't improve us onfield then bugger off and get some people who can because I, like many of my NMFC friends, have had enough of being the laughing stock of the AFL yet again. Enough is enough.

 

[DrZaius]

Regression and complacency, complacency and regression. Everyone's especially down on the club right now after a diabolical last three rounds, but really that was just an extension of the problems that were apparent throughout the entire season (yes, including the fabled period "after the bye"). We continued with the culture of just expecting improvement to be the natural outcome of showing up, of heads dropped at the slightest signs of adversity and jubilation at the merest semblance of being on the trajectory of a normal rebuilding side for a month or two. We failed to set any standards and still fell short of them.

You could definitely pluck out a few players and say we saw meaningful improvement from them, but I feel like almost all of them come with significant caveats. Xerri proved completely capable of being the #1 ruck and playing with full intent and impact, but he still lacks in terms of his stoppage craft and general game-sense; his role in our sudden and unexpected midfield malaise - the part of the ground we were supposedly stacked with talent and could bank on while we built the bookends - gets overlooked due to his individual stats sheer and individual improvement. Archer coming on in the second half of the year is probably the one unqualified success story of the season. Corr's turnaround from about Round 8 onwards into being quite dependable one-on-one was very welcome, though not entirely without the brainfades, and hardly the augur of a brighter future that a 30-year-old proved capable. Top-line younger players developing in line with expectations for their age/stage of career or better, despite disrupted continuity (Wardlaw) or defensive limitations (McKercher). Players like Pink and Teakle, without being even close to superstars, offering a basic level of structural functionality that helped to provide glimmers of a gameplan during that halcyon period of honourable losses. Tucker moving to more of a lockdown defensive role second half of the year seems a fit. Hansen showed a bit when few others did in the last two weeks, I didn't see it with him before but maybe something there?

None of the individual growth really amounted to anything collectively though, and there were plenty who regressed and had down or at least indifferent years. I'm less concerned about the individual downs (Scott never quite suited the backline role we trialled early, Simpkin visibly not returning quite right after the Webster hit) and more bothered by what feels like a collective disdain for accountability - the ease of opposition clearances was damning on our midfield group's defensive disinterest, too often a number of our forwards conceded possession hoping for the cheap ball out the back rather than making a genuine contest, frequently we had players caught HTB in open space through lack of awareness (and presumably lack of talk)... all amounting to a side very much the opposite of "hard to beat when they come out to play".

Ultimately failure begets more failure, so it's not totally surprising to see everything break down together - when the team struggles and whatever system we have collapses, cohesion is lost and players retreat into doing all they know how to do independently, which only muddles us further. But pair the often limp efforts on the field with the nauseating sense still permeating from just about all involved at the club that all of this is just a normal part of the difficult process of rebuilding and that we're unquestionably on track, and it really starts to look ugly. I could stomach the stagnation in actual results (for now at least) if there were clear signs that the team as a whole were bedding in a good gameplan, honing their skills, or even just giving their all, but none of that is the case - we're softer, dumber and more rudderless than ever before.

The last five years, purely in terms of results, is now comfortably the worst 5-season span of any side in the AFL era - our success rate of 14.49% from 2020-2024 easily behind Sydney 1990-1994 (19.44%), let alone more recent 'successful' resurgences people like to compare ours to (Melbourne's worst, 2011-2015, was 23.18%; Brisbane 2014-2018 hit 21.82%; Carlton 2015-19 23.64%). Literally the only spans worse in VFL/AFL history are the Saints' infamous earliest years, University, us and Hawthorn upon joining or shortly after, post-WWII St Kilda, and mid-1960s Fitzroy. So it's bewildering to me, not to mention galling and concerning, that the narrative coming from the club basically hasn't moved since the comment 4-5 years back from Ben Buckley (or whoever else it might have been) that we're now finally financially stable enough to afford a rebuild - from the outset, it felt like a kind of supporter mentality remark rather than a clear and purposeful staking out of direction, and half a decade on it seems the entire club is now suffused with the same shrugging determinism and vague faith that 'it will turn', leaving the when and how to be somebody's else problem just like our players all stand around waiting for a teammate to go and win the ground ball to hand it to them (felt like this happened at least twice in today's game alone, one leading directly to an opponent goal).

Lauding our ascent to mere mediocrity for a handful of weeks post-bye just cemented my sense that we've collectively embraced a loser mentality - relief and a sense of promise are fine, and especially in a patch as grim as this I get the desire to sell hope, but ultimately we were dropping winnable games against middling opponents, and our actual wins came unimpressively against weak opponents we've already proven ourselves capable of beating. It's hard to get excited by our spate of re-signings throughout the year when the players are all passengers desperately in need of drivers; even Clarkson as coach, who warranted the faith of the longer contract given his experience and successes, has shown little so far to repay that commitment, and next year feels pretty pivotal for his position with us too.

TL;DR - despite some positives on an individual player level, this season was a catastrophic failure and a clear step backwards without any real system or path forward to show for it, and the narrative from the club being largely either that improvement is imminent, or that losing this badly this often is just an inevitable normal part of rebuilding, just confirms how deep the cultural rot has become. A season I'm delighted to see the back of; bring on AFLW!

Bravo.

Once again you have managed to reach into my mind and eloquently express the thoughts I am not clever enough to articulate.

 

[pupstar]

Foundation GWS 30 wins in first 100
Foundation GCS 25 wins in first 100

North 13 wins in last 100

Says it all. Absolute rabble.

Tassie are closer to a flag than us.

Rubbish.

 

[Gumble Frankieton]

This is the first year since I was a hirsute young fella that has me actively looking forward to NYE.

For both personal and footballing reasons I would never like to see a year like this again. If 2024 was a mortal creature I’d kill it twice and then bury the bastard that deep that you’d need to dig a mineshaft to find its remains.

Now for some positivity:

Sheezel and McKercher showed that we can draft top end talent that can regularly perform at a high level. Early days in the case of McKercher obviously but the signs are good.

Archer and Xerri showed that hitherto unremarkable players can establish themselves as genuine senior players. More so in the case of X who has gone from being a handy ruck to someone that is in genuine AA form.

For me, the difference makers next year, and beyond, may well be the players who step up and become the next Xerri and Archer. These players need to go from being fringe players to actually demand a spot based on consistent output rather than being picked on potential with only sporadic performances of the required level.

 

[Ashley B]

You know I have flag pole with a North flag on it . It’s been at half mast for all our recent losses. The rare time it does get raised there’s a permanent mark where it’s been stationed the majority of the time. Good times

 

[pupstar]

You know I have flag pole with a North flag on it . It’s been at half mast for all our recent losses. The rare time it does get raised there’s a permanent mark where it’s been stationed the majority of the time. Good times

Its better than a white flag like many are doing on here. Good times are ahead I'm absolutely sure about it

 

[harper2bastinac]

This club better put in the hard yards over the pre season, this was supposed to be the year the clubs middle aged players took the team back to a position they want to be in and completely failed.
Learn how to play a proper structure for an entire game, stop giving away stupid free kicks right in front of goal when the pressure comes, stop playing dead for quarters at a time.
On top of that recruit a proper key forward or move comben back as soon as logues fit, and finally get a real small forward who can do it all, how can so many teams have 2-3 a week playing and we barely have one playing 10 games a season? In fact even put simpkin closer to goal (not high half forward) as he’s proven in the past he can kick goals and clearly isn’t the same player in the midfield anymore.
Move mckercher up to the wing as hes done his apprenticeship in the backline, and even move fisher as a small forward if we can’t find anyone else as he’s a flipping awful defender.
Give the captaincy to Larkey too as lmac and simpkin are clearly struggling to set standards, Lmac especially is the worst captain in the game and has let the club down so many times with his dumb decision making.
Hawthorn says they’re sick of losing and end up playing finals, we say it and continue to disappoint. Enoughs enough, I for one am sick of getting belted by teams like the hawks, crows, dogs, cats, saints, lions, and especially the drug cheats and Judas crew year in year out, show some flipping standards and do something about it.

 

[Horace]

I don't think we should get too down on ourselves after yesterdays game for the very simple reason, there was nothing worth playing for apart from for a number players, they might have been playing for their careers.

In contrast, Hawthorn had everything to play for, being cementing a place in the top 8 and even, although highly unlikely, a top 4 berth.

I suspect that three games this year did a lot of psychological damage to the general mindset of our players, being the games against the Pies, the Godees and the loss a couple of weeks ago against the Eagles.

In my opinion, the state of the head and its thought processes, has a huge impact on outcomes, not just in football but in all walks of life.

To have played such scintillating football against the Pies in the first half and then to lose so cruelly in the end, has to have had an impact. The loss to the Godees was different, but also, would have taken its toll, because of that crucial free to Stephen May (nice to see the Godees on holiday too, because with cheats like him in their team they deserve to be where they are.)

Then to have the extraordinary finish and loss to the Eagles, surely would have taken out what was left of the "stuffing" they had in them.

Add to that, the absence of Sheezel (who has been so much a beacon of hope for us these last two years), plus the absences of Comben, who has been terrific this year, and Logue, who has had such a terrible run with injuries in his two years, plus Arch out of the game so early yesterday, I think they could only withstand so much.

So in my opinion, absolutely no surprises the magnitude of our last two losses in rounds 23 and 24, against teams firmly in the finals race. Mentally I think the collective mindset of the team was shot.

Clearly there are deficiencies, not least some older experienced talent to help us keep our heads up and get us across the line in those tight games.

But in my view, we are not as bad, nor as far away, as we have appeared in Rounds 23 and 24.

 

[Horace]

I also have a theory that the AFL fixture needs to be radically re-worked.

Rounds 23 and 24, have delivered some great percentage boosters to the Bulldogs, Hawthorn, Carlton in Round 23 and Geelong. Easy wins that have impacted on the composition of the top 8, delivering advantages to some clubs and not others.

In my opinion, every team should play everyone else in the first 17 rounds, there should then be a bye, after which the fixture should be set for the last 5 rounds, with the bottom six to play each other again, the middle six to play each other again and the top six to play each other again.

Blow outs will still happen towards the end of the season, but they won't impact to nearly the same extent on the final top 8, because the better sides in the top echelons of the ladder, will be playing each other, all with a genuine chance of a finals berth.

No idea what happens with Gather Round, though.

 

[Archer_11]

Five years of football agony and I don't honestly see any improvement. Nothing. Most of us had hopes this year to see 6 or 7 wins. Yup. Why do we hold any hope for next year? I've paid up my membership for many, many years and will till the day I die. But this is the worst I have ever seen our club on and off the field, ever. We have certainly managed to put ourselves in a reasonable financial position but sponsorship is a major worry. No shorts sponsor for a season - unheard of. Mazda not renewing as yet - a worry. The football team? I'm not sure. Is Clarko cooked? Is Rawlings up to it? I suppose Rawlings recent draft choices are looking good but what about the rest? Our CEO has not made her mark as yet and questions are being asked. I have met her once so have no opinion. I'm not an insider but there are a few eye brows raised when you say her name. Is our culture becoming an issue? Been a few things said on BF re the club not being a happy place. All I know for sure is that the club is at its lowest ebb. It is so easy for losing to become a habit. And right now we are massive losers. I still cannot get my head around the statement by a few, including Clarko, that the players dropped their bundle after the WCE game. WTF? What did the club do about it? How can that be an excuse for the doggies and hawks total capitulation? If the off field folk can't improve us onfield then bugger off and get some people who can because I, like many of my NMFC friends, have had enough of being the laughing stock of the AFL yet again. Enough is enough.

According to my bidness network Jen ain't it and the decision to overlook Simon was a dead set howler. Whatever can be said about her performance, the outcome of not having a shorts sponsor is reprehensible. Doesn't sit easily with her getting the gig off the strength of her commercial acumen.

Last time Mazda renewed it was August in the year of expiry, maybe a bit soon to view this as a massive worry. Although at the rate we're going we'll be paying them to avoid the embarrassment of cold calling Hypertec.

 

[tricknologist]

Coming into the season I felt that 5 wins would be the pass mark and we fell well short of that. I've seen some people argue that we came close to a 6 win season, but we also came close to a 0 win season. None of ours wins were emphatic and we could've easily lost all of them. In that sense, I can't see the season as anything but an abject failure. Sure, there were some good signs from players like Xerri, Wardlaw, McKercher, Comben, Archer, and (of course) Sheezel, but I don't really see much growth in the team. The final 3 weeks showed that we're still a mentally weak team that falls to pieces at even the slightest bit of pressure. Maybe that'll get better with experience, but progress is never guaranteed, especially when the senior players haven't shown the ability to lead in difficult situations (e.g. the co-captains failed to lead and execute skills under pressure during the implosion against West Coast).

Also, while we did play some good football post-bye, we've done that before and it's all amounted to nothing. We played good football under Shaw when he was the interim coach, the second half of Noble's first season, and in the second half of last year. Each time I thought we were starting to turn the corner and then the next season we followed up with some of the worst football you'll ever see. I'm not sure what will happen if the first half of next season is like the first half of this season. We'll be in existential crisis mode, if we're not there already.

 

[Loose_Cannon]

Heading into 2024 I thought six wins would be a pass mark for the group, with the losses to the Pies, Dees, and Eagles the ones that got away. I think we'd all feel very differently about the year had we won those games, even with the late season beltings from the Swans, Dogs, and Hawks. The last two rounds are a stark reminder that while the best 22 we can field can be competitive, and will have a decent crack at even more experienced sides, our list is still so thin that when a few injuries pile up after a long season (as they do for every club) we just can't cover it.

Elite sport is a funny thing at times, and you could see that play out yesterday, and Clarko alluded to it in the post match. That result was more mental application and will to be involved than anything else. The club just doesn't know how to win, or at least they don't know how to win consistently. The only remedy for that is time and experience, unfortunately.

When you line up all the positives, by themselves it paints a decent enough picture. Success is not linear - we saw that from this very Hawthorn team this year. After Round 5 I think everyone watching, media and fans alike, thought Hawthorn had gone backwards, but they stuck with what they were doing and managed to set things right and now look at them. It's amazing what a group can do when they all think they can win, and start to behave like winners - see Collingwood under McRae for another example. The concern is the gap between those positives and the negatives which are so diabolical it has fans, not critics, calling for the club to be wound up.

Whether we have the right coaching staff to get us winning consistently or not remains to be seen, but we at least seem to have got talent identification right after so many misses over the last decade. All the young guys can play, and some are improving out of sight - few if any saw big X doing what he is doing and I don't think anyone saw Archer coming on so fast even if we did think he'd improve. Sheezel was simply amazing in the second half after been moved up the ground, and Wardlaw was having a great year until Greenwood knocked him out. McKercher and Duursma both showed flashes, so hopefully another year in the system sets up a big 2025 for both.

On balance, the year as a whole was disappointing, but I can see the future and it does indeed look bright.