North Melbourne’s 82-point loss to Carlton on Good Friday was only their fourth-biggest defeat since Alastair Clarkson took the reins.
The 152 points the Blues racked up in an utter procession at Marvel Stadium was only the equal second-highest score the worst defence in the AFL has given up.
But there can be no disputing that what unfolded at Docklands on Friday afternoon, the magnitude of the defeat as well as the utterly insipid effort put in in every facet as the Blues waltzed in 15 second-half goals, is the low point of Clarkson’s tenure, and a nadir to rival the depths plumbed by this club when David Noble ran the show.
This was the same issues that have seen North give up triple-figure scores in five of six matches to start 2025 – a woeful defensive structure, pitiful pressure put on by a midfield among the league’s highest-paid, and individual defending that would honestly be an insult to headless chooks.
To do it on the club’s one marquee day, and for it to be inflicted by the team whose profligacy going inside 50 has made them a meme all season long, just adds to the embarrassment.
If you’re a North supporter not already broken by the most horrific half-decade we’ve seen from a footy club since the death throes of Fitzroy, I wouldn’t blame you for considering this the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you’re still clinging on, then frankly you deserve better than what your team is giving you.
It’s hard to know what’s more disappointing – another dismal performance in defence to leak another massive total against a team with only one score for the season above 75 heading in and a leading goalkicker with six majors to his name, or a midfield which has by and large held up well this season getting the proverbial beaten out of them.
That five of the Blues’ seven first-quarter goals to take a stranglehold on the game came from stoppages suggests the latter; but it’s also worth noting just where those stoppage losses were coming, and the ease with which the Blues were able to stream downfield whenever they won the contest.
The first came directly from a centre bounce, but it wasn’t the usual surge straight forward from the guts that usually brings about such goals: this was George Hewett one-twoing with Patrick Cripps on defensive side of the centre circle, hitting up Corey Durdin some 70 out from goal, and then waltzing past for the handball receive and kicking to a leading Charlie Curnow inside 50.
There’s no one else to blame here but Harry Sheezel: he initially corrals Hewett as he kicks to Durdin, at least denying him the ability to run with the ball if offering minimal pressure on the pass itself, but then has zero accountability as he saunters through the central corridor, leaving his opponent free to rack it up in dangerous places.
The second unfolds in similar style, albeit from a ball-in on the wing rather than a centre bounce: Sam Walsh clears after sharking a pressured George Wardlaw handball, and from there, the Blues cruise from one side of the ground to the other from Adam Saad to Blake Acres to Mitch McGovern to Jack Carroll, and while the mark inside 50 is an excellent one from Durdin, that not a single one of the five disposals it took to get the ball from the stoppage to him is embarrassing.
Quite genuinely, the closest anyone got to a tackle in it was when Jacob Konstanty wrapped Blake Acres up after taking the one mark in the chain.
The comparison was stark: Wardlaw burst through the stoppage and got first hands on the footy, but was immediately under the pump via a Zac Williams tackle and duly turned it over.
You know who was stationed next to Walsh at that contest, who gave him two metres of rope with which to easily clear the contest? Sheezel again.
It’s even more damning because we know from watching the Blues this year that, under the barest modicum of pressure, their midfield loves nothing more than to hack and hope long inside 50 – that’s essentially why only Brisbane racked up more inside 50s in the first five rounds, yet up until trouncing West Coast they’d not even touched 80 on the scoreboard.
And this is even before the game became a rout.
The third stoppage goal of the term was at least not Sheezel’s fault – it was an issue with structure and not personnel.
When Tom De Koning outmanouevres Tristan Xerri to lace out a tap to the roving Jesse Motlop, he powers through the front of the stoppage with the greatest of ease. Why? Because there’s no defensive sweeper for North at the centre bounce – it should be Tom Powell, but he has been sucked into the contest going head-to-head with Patrick Cripps, and can only cut the angle to where Motlop is darting away, meaning he’s still a metre and a half clear when he goes inside 50.
Meanwhile, on the wing, Dylan Stephens, the one Roo who might actually be able to impact the contest, is more conscious of not letting Walsh out of his sight, because while Motlop streams down the corridor and towards 50, he’s running parallel to him, at no point even trying to impact.
It’s becoming a theme at North this year that if your man beats you, as Motlop did to Luke Parker at the initial stoppage, then no one’s going to cover you.
If you wanted a reminder that this Blues side are still rather ordinary, it comes with Lewis Young dropping a mark he should have swallowed over his head, only to get another chance by wrapping up Caleb Daniel at ground level for a quite generous holding the ball.
Number four is the first stoppage goal that’s actually the defenders’ fault: chasing a Tom De Koning tap forward that bounces its way to 20 out from goal, Aidan Corr, Charlie Comben and Lewis Young all reach the footy at roughly the same time, the ball is jarred out of Corr’s grasp, and Zac Williams, having steered clear, gets the gift.
But it’s more proof of the real issue with the Roos losing the stoppage battle: yet again, there is no one in the midfield group prepared to hunt the footy running defensively with anything like the same vigour as when it’s them doing the attacking.
Sheezel, Luke Davies-Uniacke and even Tom Powell are all ball-winners, yet in a midfield stocked with star power, all have been comprehensively walloped by a Blues group which hasn’t hesitated to apply suffocating pressure on the few occasions they haven’t won that footy, and have received in turn nothing approximating AFL-standard endeavour to chase, to tackle, to prevent easy, clean breakaways.
Number five is ugly for Tristan Xerri, getting comprehensively muscled off a defensive 50 boundary throw-in for De Koning to snap one of his own – but the issue is the original muff-up that allowed the Blues to set up the stoppage in the first place, a horror Davies-Uniacke kick from defensive 50 that was nowhere near any Roo and enabled an instant Carlton turnover.
Which is the perfect segue into the secondary issue plaguing North – their ball use from defensive 50 is disastrously bad.
In virtually every scoring category, the Roos sit entrenched in a triumvirate of terrible with Richmond and North Melbourne. They’re dead last at conceding scores from stoppages, third-worst from turnovers (and five points a game worst than the 15th-ranked Essendon), and third-worst at giving up scores from defensive half.
Six of the Blues’ goals (to North’s zero) for the day came from forward 50 intercepts – turning the ball over within 50 metres of goal. That’s pathetic to the point that there’s really nothing Alastair Clarkson can do about it.
Caleb Daniel, specifically brought in to bring some calm composure and good ball use to defensive 50 to allow Sheezel to be used further afield, is kicking atrociously, either straight up turning the ball over or putting teammates under pressure with simple passes that land a good five metres short – he gave his fellow Roos more half-volleys than Roger Federer’s hitting partner.
Colby McKercher, who looked so promising in his maiden year in 2024, isn’t faring any better, while Finn O’Sullivan does seem like a nice kick but is clearly overawed by the leap in pressure and intensity at AFL level from junior footy – he was caught holding the ball several times in about sixteen minds, while he’s either not able or not willing to work into space to offer teammates an outlet options in the manner Sheezel was in a similar role in his own debut season.
Poor skills impact everything: they’re the difference between a well-executed switch and Charlie Comben’s cross-goal pass getting intercepted by Blake Acres, as happened here.
The decision-making back there is no better than the execution: I don’t know what Powell thought Comben could do with this hospital handpass to the teeth of goal, or why he was running that way in the first place instead of trying to turn around and achieve something meaningful going towards goal, but I suspect he won’t be able to answer those questions either.
Or why Griffin Logue doesn’t just take the Curnow tackle and foce a ball-up; or indeed why Daniel just waltzes away from his opponent, Durdin, into the back pocket for a cheap handball receive to a spot he won’t be able to do anything with it anyway, in the process leaving a free Blue in the most dangerous spot.
Individually, things are tough enough down there without adding all these disasters. Aidan Corr is neither powerful enough to adequately man talls nor quick or crafty enough to go with the smalls – Zac Williams and Jesse Motlop ran rings around him in the last quarter on Friday.
Charlie Comben is great in the air and a fine interceptor, which would be awesome if he just needed to be a Connor Idun-type, but he’s poor at ground level and regularly outmatched when he has to face key forwards who can get him on a lead.
I could go on about the rest of the backline, but it’s honestly unfair: they’re outmatched week on week by the forwards they have to cope with, and it’s not on them that the entire team offers them the protection of a torn Durex. Essendon’s backline, for instance, is just as suspect on paper as North’s, but they’re able to get away with it for as long as the Bombers’ midfield applies sufficient pressure to keep entries untidy, which for the most part they’re capable of.
Herein lies the problem for North Melbourne: the backline is a wreck, both structurally and individually, and pressure on the ball-carrier is nonexistent most weeks.
Against the Blues, when both those traits were exposed by getting crushed in the ball-winning stakes at every contest by Hewett, Adam Cerra and occasionally Patrick Cripps, there is just no way this team can stop a monster walloping. And make no mistake, a 20-10 centre clearance advantage is a hiding.
Which brings the buck back, deservedly, to Clarkson.
To give him the slightest of excuses, it’s entirely possible he acknowledges that his team isn’t capable of defending to any degree, and that they’re only hope is to keep the game as wide open and free-flowing as possible to beat teams in shootouts. That was how it looked like they were trying to play at the start of 2024, after all – remember Northball?
But there are ways to not be this paper-thin: ways like using Parker, ostensibly brought in to teach these young punks about the tough stuff, as your defensive-minded on-baller to run the occasional tag or play the sweeper role at centre bounces, not be your goalkicking midfielder who bagged two in an 82-point hammering.
Or trying to turn Jy Simpkin, the best tackler in this team, into your Trent Cotchin-style hardarse at stoppages who sacrifices his own game to be a ruthless pressure bastard setting the standard for the rest of the group and meaning Sheezel and Davies-Uniacke don’t have to do all that much pesky two-way running.
Maybe that way, if the ball goes inside defensive 50, it won’t be one or two desperately scrambling Roos defenders trying to keep out both their Blues forwards and a midfield surging up to lend a hand – like when Hewett capped off his wonderful afternoon with a snap under minimal pressure, with North’s on-ballers apparently putting trivial concerns like clogging up space in defensive 50 and keeping tabs on the most prolific man on the ground in the too-hard basket.
This is different to when North was just a plain old extremely bad team with no redeeming qualities and the odd shining light.
This is a side good enough to head into Good Friday as a legitimate chance of winning in most people’s books, one that you thought might just have a chance of keeping the Blues of all teams to a low enough score to claim the scalp.
It’s the pain that follows hope that makes this such a pitiful loss. I’d say it was rock bottom for Clarkson’s Roos, but to be honest, every time you think this team has finally sunk to the lowest possible ebb, they surprise you.
If they’re good at anything, this mob, it’s that.
