The crucial Clarkson decision that triggered North’s incredible comeback

North’s emergency Ward(law)

In the most off-Broadway game you can get, overshadowed by a catfight for the top of the ladder and the Pendlebury extravaganza, and the fact you are North Melbourne and playing Gold Coast at Docklands on a winter Saturday, North Melbourne delivered absolute box office.

This game. This LDU (Luke Davies-Uniacke), Cam Zurhaar, George Wardlaw final quarter encore deserved better than a footnote to the weekend.

Undoubtedly, the Suns were cooked, or steamed and basted coming out of Darwin. They became orange traffic cones in the last quarter with only slightly less movement.

Regardless North delivered their second biggest come from behind win in the club’s history. They did it playing unshackled football that exploited the Suns’ inertia.

Clarkson scrapped the tags. Wardlaw had been on Matt Rowell to only modest effect but in the final quarter had 13 touches linking play through the corridor with LDU, and had five score involvements. Zurhaar was moved forward again and played like someone promising to be good and pleading to never be sent back to the naughty corner.

The momentum in that last quarter made the win feel inevitable against the side that had stopped. Should Zurhaar have had his shot after the siren, though?

When Zurhaar was correctly paid the free for holding, Nick Larkey played on and tried to take the advantage and kick the winning score. Then he missed his foot. It proved no advantage at all but that is rarely the test of the rule, it’s whether you take the advantage not whether you achieve an advantage. And he took the advantage.

There were still about 40 seconds to go with the scores level though so had play been called to carry on with the advantage it is likely with the ball in the goal square and most likely a stoppage and throw up that North would still score something in those seconds and win. Yes, very hypothetical.

A remarkable round

Remarkably Carlton won their second game in a row. Less remarkably Essendon didn’t. They lost again. They have won one game in 12 months.

Remarkably GWS belted Brisbane by 13 goals. Less remarkably Geelong won again at home and have now beaten the only two teams who sit above them on the ladder, as well as last year’s premiers.

Remarkably North Melbourne delivered their second-biggest comeback in football to beat Gold Coast. Less remarkably the Suns lost another game after playing in Darwin.

Remarkably Richmond won another game. Less remarkably they did so over Essendon who lost four players to injury.

Remarkably 90,000 people went to the MCG to watch a non-Victorian team sitting in the bottom four play a team sitting outside the top 10. Less remarkably it was Collingwood playing.

Most remarkably of all Scott Pendlebury broke the games record.

For all the remarkable things that happened in a weekend of football, Scott Pendlebury’s setting of the games record remains the most extraordinary in the sweep of the history of the game. Yet in the context of the season it was less consequential than the injury in the same game to Jamie Elliott. For a side clinging to a hold on the 10 and an inability to score, losing Elliott, who had won the game for his team and former captain with his goals in minutes in the third quarter, it was crushing.

The Pendlespalooza overshadowed much of what else happened in football this weekend. The most significant (until GWS pantsed Brisbane) was that Carlton, who had managed one win from nine attempts before discarding Michael Voss, has now won two games in a row. In both games, they looked vastly better not only than their opposition but than themselves of only a fortnight ago.

Carlton were criticised for the timing of the decision to sack Voss so early in the season. The early impact of Josh Fraser has been subtle yet significant. The structure of players outside of the contests makes a slow midfield look less clag footed. Being structured to defend the ball that gets outside the contest and being readied to defend and intercept has already made them a side not wholly reliant on stoppages for scoring. They are playing with a system and a desire to pressure and so now create turnovers.

They give the impression of a side and coaching group that understood their failings and what should be done to fix them. They appear to be a side yearning to scream we were never as bad as that.

They only beat Port Adelaide, a side not looking destined for finals, but it was another side above them on the ladder. Another side that Carlton have said we should never have been below you on the ladder.

Ordinarily when caretaker coaches come into a job they bring with them a simple instruction to the team in the last throes of a season to simplify the game, to understand the pressure has been released so go out and play with freedom and enjoy yourselves. The Fraser experience looks a little different to that. Undoubtedly, there is the instruction to have fun and play with adventure, but it also appears there were more basic things he has attended to that mean the remainder of the season is an education process as much as a typical caretaking one of all care and no responsibility by players and coach.

Jagga Smith’s post-match comments were instructive. He wanted to be careful not to disrespect Voss whom the players clearly had – and still have – great affection for but he could not hide his excitement about the change in the team under Fraser. Winning does that. It changes all moods. At 1-8 and despairing do Carlton people not feel better about the club now than a fortnight ago?

Two wins won’t change Fraser’s mind about wanting the senior job and nor should they change Carlton’s about who they want to coach.

It’s academic and irrelevant to wonder if Carlton would have won the two games under Voss. The fact was they knew they were not going to continue with him next year so work started now on change. The first signs of the impact of initiating change are good.

Bombers are the worst in the comp – no surprise

Given the relative states of their seasons and coaching tenures it’s hard not to use Carlton as a reference point for Essendon.

It should be a big statement to describe Essendon as the worst team in the competition. It is not.

This is not an assessment based on losing to Richmond, a side still below them on the ladder on percentage, in a match where the Bombers lost four players to injury and with them any realistic chance of winning the game. It is a statement based on them winning one game in 12 months.

When Carlton sacked Voss they did so repeatedly commenting “we are 1 and 8” in win loss, and it could not go on. Essendon are now 1 and 9. They are holding fast to the fact the club knows the trajectory they are on and the long-term strategy. And it is true.

Richmond have already been down from a great high, and have harvested high-end draft picks while holding onto older players to mentoring their younger teammates. Essendon have not. They have picked up kids but until this year they have not had access to the very best kids. That will change in November when they will have access to a pick in the first couple of the draft.

They have older players but they do not have players with the leadership, self-sacrifice and on field influence of Richmond’s.

Friday night was instructive. Richmond have had terrible injuries across their group but they still have a veteran core of Tim Taranto, Jayden Short, Nathan Broad, Jacob Hopper, Nick Vlastuin and Tom Lynch. Essendon don’t have leaders like that.

Darcy Parish, a player often guilty of amassing possession without trace, was outstanding on Friday night with the way he used the ball. Zach Merrett continues to play at a high level while gnashing his teeth over whether he wants to be there. There is no Nic Martin out there, Mason Redman tries, and Andy McGrath now has a wired up jaw.

Last year they had injuries as an explanation for their plight. Injuries were an explanation on Friday too, but they were all in-game collision injuries. The broader issue of conditioning was resolved in the off-season by bringing in the highly respected Mathew Innes.

The Voss sacking and Fraser’s immediate impact begs the question whether a different coach would achieve anything different at Essendon? It is doubtful.

But many administrations get twitchy under pressure and the next bracket of games – West Coast away, Carlton and Melbourne – will invite more acute pressure if they continue to lose.

Brad Scott said recently that winning or losing this bracket of games wouldn’t change anything in the bigger picture of Essendon given the path they agreed to do down with rebuilding the list at the end of 2023. This is understandable and fair.

But the longer and deeper Essendon’s losing run continues, the more the despondency and pessimism engulfs the club and, despite Friday night’s crowd for the event/match, the more the attendances dwindle the more vexing the question becomes for the Bombers of how long can they hold the line?

Golden moment

By the time the game came on Saturday there was almost Pendlebury fatigue for the way every moment felt like it had been trawled over and wrung dry. Yet, it was all salvaged from becoming overwrought by the fans themselves. The 90,000 who turned out to a game that would have drawn half that in ordinary times. It was salvaged by the ovation at the 10-minute mark when the game stopped because it had reason to for a kick-in but then continued to be stopped because the players and umpires intuitively felt it would be rude to restart while applause went on and the record was acknowledged.

A day that was teetering on being overdone was in the end done exceptionally well.

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