First let’s have a quick look at the stats from the Adelaide game. First of all Adelaide dominated the clearances 40-27 despite the fact Goldstein dominated in the ruck 41 hit-outs to 32. This is reflected in the hard ball gets which Adelaide won 142-115. Getting to the ball first is half the battle, but to win the other half of the battle is inexcusable. They won the tackles 57-50, which is staggering, because they got to the ball first, they got the ball more often, yet they still laid more tackles than North despite they were chasing much less. So in a shorter summary North were smashed in every single aspect of footy. 63-47 inside 50s to Adelaide, 22-6 marks in 50, I could go on, but I would be a broken record, we need to take a look across the park.





Shall we start with the midfield? Why not, they were the cause of our problems. What can you say other than they were absolutely weak and unaccountable? This was everyone, it was a group effort, but I am going to make an example of our captain, Spitta. Swallow is the leader of not only the team but that core midfield group. He’s never been the most vocal captain, but he needs to gain some mongrel in him to do the job, or relinquish it.





So problems with the midfield: all day our mid-fielders were getting sucked into the contest. It’s bad enough that you are getting second to the ball all day and then not tackling but to have numerous Crows outside runners not marked is inexcusable. This is the sort of stuff you start to learn in under 12s footy. Either Scott is trying to re-write the footy play book, or he needs to start doing basic training drills to fix this. One of the major problems here is the communication which is the responsibility of all footballers, but should be led by your captain. Clearly no one was calling players out of the contest to mark the runners, and again that is inexcusable.





Tackling. Hard to write this paragraph with out swearing but the boys were soft. Not really much to say but the midfield did not contribute defensively which allowed easy ball into the Adelaide forwards. Ziebell had two tackles for the match; Nick Dal Santo one; Swallow three; Jacobs one. Simply too soft around the ball.





Forwards! I could go on about the midfield all day but I think it is about time I spared them. Forward structures, Brad Scott you mong, what were you thinking leaving out Ben Brown for Jacobs and starting Turner on the bench? We are a team full of mid-fielders who cannot kick, we have enough to fill a TAC cup side, plenty of them don’t deserve a game already, yet you bring another one in, in Jacobs, and leave out our best leading half forward? Jacobs actively contributed to our horrible forward line by banging long ineffectively which he has done hundreds of times before in the blue and white, which gave our tall forwards nothing to try and mark, and our small forwards nothing to crumb or tackle. It let the crows rebound out of 50 too easily, they transitioned down the ground purely because our forward pressure couldn’t keep up. Our big men Waite and Petrie laid four tackles each, which isn’t too bad considering the ball only went in there 47 times, only about 12 of those were actually good kicks.





Back to Brown: Brown is a better leader than Waite. Waite has a bit of extra flair than big-boy-benny-brown, and is a little more assure in his body, as Brown still resembles a giraffe finding his sea legs, but Brown leads smarter. People gave Waite some credit for his continual leading down the ground and trying to get involved, and our delivery was not good to him, but he does not help himself. He leads in straight lines which often runs into a two on one, which turns into a five on two when a pack quickly forms. Brown leads on smarter angles and often runs fat side which forces our half back line to go out that way. More space means easier marks, which means easier transitions and hopefully better delivery forward. Waite had three marks today as our key leading half forward. That is poor, despite our kicking efficiency.





Kayne Turner is my man crush, I want to marry him, he is gorgeous, and if Brad Scott ever starts him as a sub again I will take it as a personal insult. He is our best tackler in the side, and creates goals from his pressure. Again we have so many mid-fielders that couldn’t get 20 kicks at amateur level we need to start sharpening the knife so players like Turner, Wood, and Brown get a run in the forward line, because we need actual forwards down there. Our structures were horrible which leads me to defence, more importantly the half back line:





The half back line had no one to kick to. Woo, Dal Santo has kicked out and Goldstein has taken a ripper grab, he plays on without turning his back onto a running half back who looks up and sees no-one. He bombs long under pressure and butchers the kick which leads to a turn over. I will re watch the tape and tally how many times this happens. You can fix this a few ways, first players like Dal Santo and Thompson need to direct traffic in that back-line, they need to be able to see down the ground and control how the ball comes out of the 50, whether it be fat side, skinny side, or down the guts. Generally you should always go out the opposite way the ball goes in, but kick ins are not that simple. And North under Scott have this hard on for hand-balling through traffic on the skinny side. Which is yeah, frustrating when you are not on song.





Tippet. Not sure what to say, he was woeful, the ball picked on him, and any forward he was on towelled him up. Hansen should be coming back soon, he should slot straight in.





General play: ok so Walker is smashing us, Adelaide have all the run and are getting to the ball first. We have a general ethos on how we want to play, keep players ahead of the ball play on from the back line at all costs and take the game on. Particularly play fast, very fast tempo footy. Scott doesn’t like to change away from that play book. Is that because he is stubborn or because we have simply not trained any other ways to play? Walker needed to be double teamed, maybe Hansen could have done this role? We needed players behind the footy to stop the bleeding, we needed to slow the game down, feel the leather, and let someone like Waite or Petrie to lead themselves into the game. Why we kept plundering along doing the same mistakes baffled me. This has been an indictment on this team for too long. We are bi-polar in how we play, because we are one paced in how we play. We have no other gear. So when we get smashed we can’t do anything about it. Either we get to the ball first and win, or we get smashed.





This got longer than I thought it would. Basically we not only lost, we got smashed, and it was a little microcosm of what’s been wrong with North Melbourne football under Scott. Until we can learn to play more varied styles of football, until we can shut down power forwards we won’t be a premiership threat. More than that, if we play the way we played today, with our draw, we won’t make the top four, we will struggle to make the top eight, hell, we might finish in the bottom four.