IT IS the old school yard discussion.

If you were picking the best team from scratch, who would you pick first?

Well, that’s exactly what North Melbourne had to do this season.

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Finals Week 1

The Kangaroos are the newest club to come into the AFL Women’s competition, with the Roos and Geelong to join the AFL competition starting in 2019.

And they started by snaring the highest profile AFL Women’s footballer, grabbing 2018 best and fairest winner Emma Kearney out of the Western Bulldogs and straight into the Kangaroos midfielder.

That’d be like Tom Mitchell getting up and playing for Tasmania in 2019, if they were to be joining the competition.

The Kangaroos also added Collingwood group Jess Duffin, Emma King, Mo Hope and Jasmine Garner, among other high profile signings, prompting some to declare them early favourites for the competition.

The man behind their list build is Rhys Harwood, the Roos’ AFLW list manager.

“How do you build a list from scratch? It’s a good question,” Harwood told foxfooty.com.au.

North Melbourne AFLW player Mo Hope. Source: News Corp Australia

“We were probably lucky to have two years to watch the competition in its infancy and that allowed us to basically go away and work out what worked and what didn’t work.

“But probably more importantly, having appointed Scott (Gowans) full-time before we started the list build we got to work out the way that Scott wanted to play and the way that he thought the style of play to winning AFLW was, basically he told us how he wants to play and we then went away to find the players that would help him do that.”

North Melbourne appointed former Carlton assistant coach Scott Gowans in October 2017. He believed the Roos had put together a list that would mean they could contend with the remainder of the competition, despite being one of the newest teams.

North Melbourne AFLW try-outs. Source: News Corp Australia

“We’ve put together a list we are really happy with, there’s been a lot of hype around the list and it’s interesting, because I think the list is really good and Rhys Harwood has done a great job with it,” Gowans told foxfooty.com.au.

“But the facts still remain that 50 per cent of the list haven’t played an AFLW game, come the time when the lights are switched on and the camera is on, there’s still that level of unknown.

“So my job now and in Round 1 is just to try and get as much confidence as I can getting the girls to play together, so that that 50 per cent of the list don’t feel left out.”

Gowans was part of the original list build by the Blues and took plenty of learning out of the process.

“What I found is the learning from that is there probably wasn’t enough as far as getting the knowledge right from everyone because it’s still a business,” he said.

“So what we did when I came to North Melbourne, basically we decided we need a list manager so Rhys Harwood became the list manager because that’s what he actually does at the club and he’s good at it. I’m coaching and hopefully I’m pretty good at that, so that’s what I’ll concentrate on that.”

The Roos coach also suggested the move of appointed a list manager allowed for his opinion to be swayed on players, just due to Harwood’s ability to concentrate on talent alone.

“The good thing about that is we will still be able to come together and discuss things, but ultimately list management is Rhys’ and coaching is mine,” Gowans said.

Scott Gowans is the new North Melbourne AFLW coach. Source: News Corp Australia

“I think that what that has done it has sort of taught me, there’s opinions on players I had previously - that I had because I knew of them off field, whereas Rhys has gone actually football wise we need this and this.

“So that’s been a really great process and I basically said to Rhys this is how I want to play, can you go find me these players and that’s what he’s done.”

Harwood explained that with zero members of the team, they had to ensure they knew what they stood for and what their vision was going to be.

“The key is to probably work out a fair bit about yourselves first and what you stand for and represent and that’s a lot of the off-field side of things,” he said.

“Then the on-field side of things is knowing how you want to play and one of our strengths was that we were able to communicate that vision to the players on field and off field about what we want to stand for and then I guess it’s about presenting to a player and communicating that vision and hopefully they get on board.”

Head of football operations Laura Kane was pivotal in many of the moves, playing a crucial role in ensure the process between approaching players and signing them was smooth.

And that vision certainly worked, with 15 former AFLW listed players making up the inaugural North Melbourne list.

“It’s always hard to get players out of their clubs, regardless of what sport it was,” Harwood explained.

“Most of the girls now have managers so it’s about being in constant dialogue with them, but every players circumstance is different, it really depends where they are at in terms of their career, their life and so you generally get a pretty good gauge early, who is of interest at all and from there it just builds.

Laura Kane was very important in the process of signing new players. Source: News Corp Australia

“We weren’t going out there offering contracts willy-nilly, we wanted to get to know the players before and know that they would be a good fit for the club before we pursued them really, really hard.

“I think the cultural side of things is really important and building a team from scratch that was probably the main priority for us, to make sure that any player we brought in was going to add to that.

“There ended up being players that we didn’t pursue that we thought we might, because we just wanted to make sure we had 30 girls who were going to really help build something from scratch.”

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