As we near the pointy end of the season, this clash wasn’t exactly billed as a vital game with consequences aplenty, but it still maintained some level of intrigue, if only for the fact that it saw Alastair Clarkson’s return to the North coaches’ box and was an opportunity for the Demons to flex their muscles and increase their percentage as September draws ever nearer.
In the end, however, neither of those factors really contributed to the match’s outcome very much. North, despite a strong start, ran out of legs (shock, horror) and reverted to their norm of error-riddled rubbish, whilst Melbourne never really stepped on the accelerator as perhaps fans watching on from their Dinner Plain bungalows might’ve hoped. The last quarter, in particular, felt utterly futile; both teams knew their place in the match, and neither team was particularly keen on deviating from the norm. But I agreed to write this piece, so I will nevertheless try and find some interesting aspects so that you don’t all fall asleep into your Sunday pick-me-up cups of herbal tea. Let’s see what I found to muse and abuse about.
I might have the same name as Eddie Ford, but there could not be a bigger gulf in our footballing abilities. Having gotten an extended run in the seniors this year (Christ alone knows why it took so long for that to happen) he’d shown moments of swagger and skill to this point, but exploded in the first quarter of this one, with three goals and an assortment of marks, leaps and other positive signs. The best goal of the lot saw him shunt his man off the ball, gather on the run, and convert a terrific snap at full tilt from 47 metres out. It was a moment that elicited applause from Clarko in the box, and Ford’s output was a massive factor behind the unexpected start to the game that saw North five goals up.
However, Ford’s presence did not solely involve a focus on attack. He also made a point of forcing the usually-untethered Jake Lever to be defensively accountable, marking him closely and accompanying him at every aerial contest in a valiant attempt to stifle Lever’s intercepting game. As the game went on and Melbourne hit their groove, this didn’t have much of an effect, but Eddie’s two-way potential is patently obvious, and I’m excited to see him strut his stuff in the coming years.
There were some extremely puzzling stoppage setups from North throughout the game, with a Melbourne midfielder often left loose around the stoppage as Max Gawn contested in the ruck. I don’t have to tell you the almost invariable result of these contests. Gawn’s ruck craft is far too refined and impactful to allow him such an easy outlet to a teammate, and whilst North broke even in the clearances all day, these particular stoppages had me tearing what was left of my hair out (most of it was torn out last week, you see) in anger and bewilderment.
In fact, man-marking and space usage in defence is something that North have struggled with greatly since the COVID hub, and based on this latest display, it’s not something that’s going to be fixed any time soon. Melbourne’s handball cut through them with tremendous ease, and it felt once again for North that there were two or three more opposition players out there. Aside from the Fremantle game in R2 this year, there hasn’t been a performance I’ve witnessed since the beginning of last year where I’ve felt that the team’s defensive spacing was up to par.
As for the period in which things weren’t going Melbourne’s way as they stuffed up most of the things that a footy team can stuff up, it was Kozzie Pickett and Kade Chandler that really laid down the challenge to a mildly menacing-looking North outfit. Pickett, who finished with three goals and however many score assists, scored Melbourne’s first two goals, the first a miraculous left foot bender from the boundary in the wrong pocket. He also danced and baulked whenever he got the ball under pressure, adding Jack Ziebell (for his second goal) and Harry Sheezel to his already extensive list of ankle-broken victims. He is an excellent player, no doubt, but by the way the commentators were violently fellating him whenever he went near it, you’d think he was curing blindness rather than moving a piece of leather around a patch of grass in a pleasing fashion.
Chandler also was a player who, unlike many of his teammates, grabbed hold of his opportunities when they presented themselves. He nailed two quality set shots in the second term when the Dees really started to storm back into the game and was a consistent thorn in North’s side with his intelligence and skill. His jawline and face need to be seen to be believed, but there’s no doubting that he’s been a hell of a find for his club as a rookie draft pick from 2018. Honestly, who would have guessed ten years ago that Melbourne would now be one of the best clubs in regards to finding obscure talent and developing it? Insane turnaround. In my humble opinion that sort of competence shouldn’t even be allowed to flourish at Melbourne. After all, they have (or had) a 55+ year long reputation to uphold.
Not only was there poor defensive man-marking from North, but there was also a myriad of braindead errors with ball in hand from about the three-minute mark of the second quarter. I knew watching the too-good-to-be-true first quarter that it was a matter of time before those mistakes started to creep in, but even I was taken aback by the absolute steaming pile of poo that the lads served up to all of their fans unfortunate enough to have nothing else to do on a Sunday afternoon. Crap kicks, fumbles, failures to rush behinds, missed tackles, collisions with teammates, the list went on, and allowed Melbourne to close a 23-point deficit at the 25-minute mark of the second quarter to trail by just four points at half time. From there the result was a formality.
I’m well aware of how broken North Melbourne is but I wouldn’t have thought it’d hurt for the players to try and stay mentally present for an entire game. Because unless there’s some malevolent anti-Santa figure in the air (the understandably jilted soul of Brent Harvey, maybe) who robs North Melbourne footballers of their motor and neural function for large periods of games, there is just absolutely no excuse to have the mental lapses that are necessary for those kinds of errors to occur. There hasn’t been an excuse for it for years, and yet the tendency to commit them is just becoming more deeply entrenched with each week. What’s the Buddha up to these days? Because I reckon he’d go a fair way to helping the club out of this mental funk. Logistical issues regarding his deathful state and methods of payment be damned.
The mention of the North errors which allowed Melbourne to haul themselves back into the contest brings me to their running power and fitness. Even with one eye clearly on the run home and their September prospects in the second half, they outran and outworked their faltering North opponents. They ran with ease. They kicked with ease. They established a five-goal lead with ease. It was done with no more effort than necessary, and set up a barnstorming final stretch of games for them against the Blues, Hawks and Swans. It wasn’t quite done with contempt, and there was some feeling in the game, with physical clashes and off-ball scuffles abounding, but you could tell they knew their superiority. As (in my opinion) one of the top three fittest sides in the league, they know they have the measure of any opponent they come up against, and it’s just a matter of executing the necessary moves to win. I’ll be intrigued to see what their tempo is like come finals. WIll the hurt of last year spur them into a more aggressive style, or will they relax into the measured and methodical approach that’s characterised their play for a lot of the year.
And that’s everything for today. Melbourne 15.13.103-North 10.11.71.
The game’s result was never in doubt from the half-time siren. North ensured that the protective armour of numbness I gained after they broke me last week remains in place and Melbourne didn’t really teach us that much about them that we didn’t already know, aside from the fact that maybe they are capable of underestimating opponents for a period of time. And they’re far from alone in that. After all, it was just last week that I ordered anchovies on a pizza for the first time, confident I could handle the situation.
Till next time.
