Are you getting a little impatient, North fans?
I am. I know rebuilds take time, and the growth is often not linear, but 2025 was the sixth-straight season the Roos ended up in the bottom three.
It’s no wonder the patience is wearing a little thin.
The club has first-round draft picks aplenty, an experienced coach with four premierships to his name, and they have players who look like they could become genuine stars of the competition at any tick of the clock.
So, why the big hold up?
It’s a bigger question than we’ll answer in the intro, but it reflects how North fans must be feeling as the 2026 season draws closer. They have sat and watched other teams launch toward finals from the bottom end of the ladder, but North has remained there, going nowhere fast.
Is this the year they finally make some progress up the ladder?
Finishing 16th in 2025 should not be something to hang your hat on, but I had one North fan commenting on our articles saying it was “progress”. In theory, it was – one place up on the 2024 result, but Kangaroo supporters deserve better than that. It was like kicking a behind and celebrating because a score was put on the board – the team is out there to kick goals, not accrue points one at a time. Same as ladder positions.
For Clarkson, several stars, and even possible free agents, this season looms as something big. North simply has to show marked improvement. The bottom four needs to become an unpleasant memory. And it all begins now.
If you’re reading all our previews, you can skip ahead a little bit – It’s the standard intro.
We’re steaming toward a new season, and as we do, it is time to turn our attention away from the glory of last year and look at the possibilities of the new one.
The players have been on the track for a while now – the Christmas break is over, and as we work through January, the charge into the new season ramps right up.
This is where premierships are won and lost. This is where improvements are made and lists come together. This is where the kids show if they’re serious or not, and young projects become the next group of stars. New faces, new colours, old heads with renewed passion… so much feeds into the making of a contender. And as the days tick down toward the intra-club clashes, practice games, and eventually the real stuff, questions are raised about each team and how they’re going to perform in this new season.
And that’s where HB and The Mongrel come in.
We don’t do things by halves here, at The Mongrel Punt. When we do a season preview, we go all in to make sure it is the best, most comprehensive coverage you’ll receive. We pride ourselves on it. If you want to read one season preview for your team, or any team, this series will provide what you’re after.
The way it works is as follows.
Each club has a minimum of 15 questions asked about the upcoming season, their coaches, their players, and their expectations. The answers are not glossed over. We dive deep on each and every one of them – some singular answers would normally be long enough for an entire column. The first five questions/answers are free for you to consume. The next 10-14 for each club are for our members, including a special appearance from Mrs Mongrel to throw her two cents in the mix.
Isn’t it a bit early for a season preview? Well, I suppose, but do you know how long it takes to write seven-to-nine thousand words? That’s 18 x 8,000… gets out the calculator… that’s 144,000 words. The average novel is about 85,000 words, so buckle the hell up with these previews; HB goes deeper than anyone else covering the game..
Also, if there are any issues that arise after the publication of the preview for any team, they will be covered in standalone articles to act as additions to this preview.
You will not read a more comprehensive season preview than this – I guarantee it. This is where we start the run to the new season, and believe me – nobody does it better than The Mongrel.
Let’s jump into what the 2026 season looks like for the North Melbourne Football Club.
1 – WHAT IS THE BEST ROLE FOR JY SIMPKIN?
This may come across harshly. And if it does… good!
Honestly, there is a big part of me that thinks that right now, his best role is elsewhere. As in not at the North Melbourne Football Club. But here we are, entering 2026, and there was nobody willing to take on his big contract for what they were going to get from him.
I cannot blame them.
Jy rolled the dice and lost. He wanted out, but there were no teams willing to take him on.
Perhaps it was the result he needed?
I am sure being paid extremely well to do what you do would create a positive sense of self. It may also cause you to overestimate your value to the club.
When your best game for the season (and perhaps your career) comes in a preseason game representing something other than the team you lead, I reckon it gives an indication as to how much the “captain” was truly invested in North Melbourne.
Ousted from the midfield, Simpkin could have taken it on the chin, and used the situation as an opportunity to demonstrate to the young players on the list that maturity and a team-first attitude were the qualities required to build a good team. Especially from your leaders. However, he opted to pout and look for somewhere else to call home.
A lot of the media over trade period centred around Zach Merrett – another captain – wanting out of his deal to join Hawthorn, but I felt Simpkin was worse. Merrett has a couple of good years left. Simpkin is 27 – he has four years left on this current deal. He needed to suck it up.
Instead, the only thing sucking was his attitude, and it deserves the condemnation it received.
Know what would have inspired his younger teammates? Doing what Travis Boak did years ago, when Ken Hinkley removed him from the midfield and plonked him at half-forward in 2018. Did Boak piss and moan and try to orchestrate a trade?
Nope – he went away, enrolled himself in a training camp overseas, put in the biggest preseason of his life (and several more following it) and let his form and fitness do the talking. He got in better shape than he’d ever been, worked himself into the ground, and in the process, made himself so valuable to Port Adelaide in the middle that Hinkley had to concede he’d made a mistake.
Boak had the best season of his career in 2019, and endeared himself to Port fans all over again.
That was the opportunity that presented itself to Jy Simpkin, following the 2025 season. But again, here we are entering the 2026 season and he is back at Arden Street. Only now, he is no longer the captain of the ship. If he is not careful, he might be off the ship entirely.
In the second half of last season, Simpkin was moved to the wing. Now, before I get to numbers, we have to consider that moves like this take time to get comfortable with, and going from being an inside player to an outside one took a bit of an adjustment.
How big?
From Round 14 to Round 18, Simpkin played like he didn’t really want to be out there, averaging just over 15 touches per game, and that includes one game where he was shifted back onto the ball for the majority of the match.
Things stabilised after that, with Simpkin picking up his effort, but watching from the outside, I was not pleased with what I saw.
And so, the next question I ask is whether Simpkin can become the next Travis Boak? Can he work harder than he ever has to prove Alastair Clarkson wrong? Can he push himself to the limit in preseason to make his selection as a midfielder again the ONLY viable option available?
I hope this is the case, both for Simpkin and the Kangaroos.
Intentionally or not, Simpkin burnt some bridges during the trade period. To a struggling team, having your captain shop himself around like a poor cut of beef was embarrassing. They needed positives – Simpkin was not one of them.
He has some work to do to redeem himself. If that work began the day the season ended, then this story may have a happy ending.
If not… I am not sure how this year plays out for him.
2 – WHAT IS THE ACCEPTABLE PASS MARK FOR GEORGE WARDLAW?
This is year number four for George Wardlaw.
Time flies, huh?
Three years of injury. Three years of disappointment. Three years for a total of 39 games.
Ouch.
This bloke has the ability to be the difference-maker in the North midfield, and if you watch him when he is out there, you’d know exactly why.
I love a player with mongrel in his game; the type who will fight and scrap for the footy, and on the off chance he loses a contest, dives after the fleeing player with the footy in a last-ditch attempt to disrupt him. Players like that are few and far between – they’re just bred differently. And when they’re able to string games together, special things start happening.
But Wardlaw has been unable to string those games together, constantly forced to sit out with a myriad injuries.
Last year, his longest streak of consecutive games was seven. The year before that, it was eight. Other than those two stretches, there have been a lot of little runs of three or four games, tops.
And so, that becomes the way we determine the pass mark for Wardlaw in 2026. Yes, he can be a difference maker. Yes, he can be a game-breaker. But you don’t do those things without repetitions under your belt. Week in, and week out, we need to see George Wardlaw out on the park, his body permitting him to get the work done to become a reliable member of the North midfield.
Because the thing about those little two week holidays where he is nursing one injury or another, it takes away match fitness. You listen to any player talk after their first real match sim of the season – they’re stuffed! It is a different type of fitness to being on the track. Wardlaw can run laps, nurse whatever injury is the latest to impact him, but once he returns to the real stuff, he is running out of gas too quickly. He lacks that hardened match fitness that only comes with playing full games every week.
Forget clearances, score involvements, and tackles – all those things will come. The pass mark for Wardlaw is simply to play 20 games in 2026. It’s as simple as that. He needs to demonstrate that he can handle a full season out there, crashing and bashing opposition bodies in the midfield. If he can do that, his tenacity, his ability to win the footy, and his mongrel, will see him become a favourite son of the club.
For George Wardlaw, year four could be the making of him. And if it is, I’d like someone to tell me how this could not be a massive positive for North.
If he plays 20 games, he could well end up their most important player.
3 – IS 2026 A “USE HIM OR LOSE HIM” YEAR FOR ZANE DUURSMA?
Zane Duursma is out of contract following the 2026 season.
Does that concern you?
With all the yapping about him being dissatisfied with his role in 2025, you’d think he was God’s gift to footy, but from what we’ve seen thus far, he has plenty of work to do if he wants to be treated like a walk-up start in this team.
After 13 games in 2024, he backed that up with ten last year, and whilst playing inside 50 on a poorer team can mean you’re starving for the footy, at times, Duursma never really attacked the pill like he was hungry for it. We’re amongst friends here, right? I can speak my mind?
He looked timid.
Now, we put that down to him being young and relatively slight in terms of his build, but I didn’t see him burrowing in after the footy, or executing rundown tackles. Those are the things that all players should be doing. But Zane… he didn’t seem all that interested.
I often use tackles inside 50 as a way to ascertain just how hard a forward is working without the footy in his hands. The real mongrels get after it, and they make up for not winning a heap of the ball by making their direct opponent, or any opponent in the vicinity, feel like they’re under continual pressure.
Wanna know how many tackles inside 50 Duursma laid in 2025? I’m not sure that you do…
He laid one.
In ten games, he managed one.
Brynn Teakle played four games, and he managed three!
Duursma can complain about whatever role he isn’t getting to play. He can get shitty about minutes, number of games… whatever he likes. However, for the first six games of his 2025 season, he was stationed up forward and had the defensive pressure of a rather fatigued sloth.
When he returned later in the season, he was deployed at half-back, and managed to get a bit of the footy (averaging 9.3 disposals per game… I did say “a bit”, not “a lot”).
Still, that one tackle inside 50, made more difficult by his late-season deployment, granted, is a poor result. Until he decides that it is worth his time and effort to play hard footy both when his team has the footy, and when they don’t, he will likely remain a fringe player at the club, and will look for another home.
Will North be blamed for this? Clarkson? Climate change?
Who knows? What I do know is that Duursma is from a footy family, and needs to pull his finger out if he is going to be a player for this club, or have much trade value at the end of the season. Because that’s what I can see happening.
4 – CAN A BIG SEASON FROM THE NEW CAPTAIN DRAG NORTH UP THE LADDER?
People forget that just a few short years ago, North Melbourne possessed a 70+ goal kicker on their list, and it appeared that he was going to be a perennial contender for the Coleman Medal. The fact he did this in a bottom-two team indicated that as the Roos improved, Nick Larkey would find more of the footy.
But they have kind of hung around the same place on the ladder, and Larkey has gone backwards, if anything.
What he did do, was re-sign with the club and commit to them long-term. This was a huge win for North, as the vultures were starting to circle. His signature gave others hope that North Melbourne were on the right track.
But do they require Larkey to channel the 2023 version of himself to progress along that track? What was he doing then that he hasn’t done since?
For starters, he played an additional six games back then, so this last season, where he slotted 41 goals, was probably more reflective of a 50-55 goal season had he remained on the park.
He’s basically got the same numbers across the board, sans a drop of 0.7 goals per game. I can understand why there’s been a drop off – some of the delivery to him has to be seen to be believed… and if you witness it, there is a pretty good chance your eyes will bleed.
Larkey is not a powerful contested mark. He can take the occasional grab, but he is much better suited to hitting up on the lead, or doubling back to goal where he can create space to run into. The North mids must not have got the memo, because Larkey would lead, and they’d bob it up and make him wait under it, desperately trying to hold his position until a defender came crashing in to kill the contest.
Suffice to say, there might be a few North mids that didn’t receive Christmas cards from Larkey.
Now appointed captain (a good move, reflecting his commitment to the cause), Larkey needs to produce. A 40-goal season won’t cut it. Not when your lieutenants are comprised of Cam Zurhaar, Jack Darling, and Cooper Trembath. Larkey needs to stand up, punish teams, and when he draws the heat, he needs to not only embrace it, but beat it. Being able to do this opens up opportunities for the others, as they get one-on-one contests when Larkey is drawing help-defenders in.
Paul Curtis is an intelligent footballer. He learnt how to work around Larkey, and when to provide a good alternative. As for Zurhaar… well, let’s just say he didn’t get the same helping of grey matter when they were handing it out.
If Nick Larkey can kick 60+ goals in 2026, North will be out of the bottom four and starting to give opponents real trouble. Their firepower has now got the makings of a good forward line, but without Larkey playing a potent role, things fall apart quickly.
Put the onus on him. Make him aware that as he goes, so goes the team. Some thrive on pressure – we will find out pretty quickly whether the new captain is one of them.
5 – CAN PAUL CURTIS THREATEN THE ALL-AUSTRALIAN TEAM IN 2026?
He threatened last year, and I reckon there was a lightbulb that went off over his head at one stage, as he realised that he was now at the stage of his career where his opponents were having a tough time stopping him.
He is one of those players who is deceptively good overhead, and has that quick reaction time to get to the drop zone before his opponent can see where the pill is headed.
If you play a small on him, he beats them in the air. If you play a bigger opponent on him, he gets a head of steam, hits the front of a pack, and one-grabs the footy off hands. That, my friends, is a dangerous player.
Last season, he missed four games, which probably cost him his chance at the AA team, but his return of 38 goals for the season was likely something that snuck up on all but the most devoted North supporters. If you’re one of the very few people who called this occurring, my hat goes off to you.
Despite his sudden increase in offensive output, he was also the number one ranked player at the club for pressure inside 50, recording 2.79 tackles inside 50 per game – more than double the next best Kangaroo, and good enough to see him top the league in that stat category.
Can he replicate this form?
Perhaps a better question is – can he top it?
At 22, he has the footy world at his feet right now. His return in 2025 is the type of season you expect from a player like Toby Greene. Sadly, the suspension, as weak as it was, is also something you’d expect from Toby Greene (no shade… I genuinely like TG4 as a player).
If North get another lift from Curtis in 2026, he could not only muscle his way into the All-Australian team, but he would make this North Melbourne forward a real problem to deal with.
Goals coming from Larkey and Curtis, with Zurhaar, Darling, Trembath, and… screw it, even Lachy Dovaston chiming in – this front half could start giving clubs nightmares.
The remainder of this article, and the next 16 questions are for our members. They support me, and I provide for them. It’s a good deal.
Oh… a Mongrel paywall… the worst of all paywalls. We’re on the march to the 2026 AFL season and it all begins here. The Mongrel’s Big Questions Season Previews are THE best in the business. If you know, you know… if not, maybe it’s time to find out. Pre-Season, Practice Games… we’re all in. Dump the mainstream lip service and dive into articles like this – you will never look back. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. You’re welcome to re-read the first five questions again, but if you do… there is a heap more below.
