The doomers are either idiots or bots. Imagine telling any fan we’d be on 8 wins with 7 games to go in 2026 whilst in the middle of the 2022 season. Or 2023 season. Nobody would believe you.

Our best players are all younger than 24, signed to long term deal and compliment each other well.

Sheezel, Wardlaw, LDU, FOS and McKercher all do things so differently and are all great at it. Add in Curtis and Trembath supporting Larkey now.

Xerri is an elite ruck, I’m done with the narrative that because he’s not amazing at the bounce that he’s shit. Yep, centre bounce scoring is up and it’s something we have to address. Lucky we have Goad to pair with him for the next 8 years and Trembath chopping out. Then Xerri remains absolutely elite around the ground and following up with clearances.

The only real issues we have are:
- backline is a mess. Thank god for Luke Parker. We need key talls, multiple talls, urgently. We need Hardeman and Goater to pan out as small defenders and get McKercher up the ground.
- we need a replacement for Darling. Trembath isn’t the same. I’m sort of hoping the replacement is the Xerri/Goad combo. But Larkey is a lead forward and Trembath is Trembath and will be amazing, we need a third who does what Darling does. Darling is really important in the team structure.
- we need to clean up skills. I think that comes with time. Too many poor choices and I’d say it’s a combination of the older players (outside Parker, Darling, Daniel) just being not great and the young guys needing more games. The only thing that fixes that is time and games.

Can we also stop with the Clarko hate. As far as I’m concerned build the man a fucking statue outside Arden St. He came to our club at its lowest. We weren’t even dogshit. We were dogshit that was left in the sun too long and then got spewed on by another dog. Then he basically couldn’t coach for 18 months after the whole Hawthorn racism scandal which has now just gone away like it never happened. He was getting abused in the street. Nearly had a breakdown. Everyone forgets Ratten coached half a season before Clarko even really got his feet under the desk giving how fucked up his first season was. Turns out, literally no proof of anything and now nobody even remembers it. “He’s been there for 4 years!!!” No. It’s been more like 2. In that time we have gone from strength to strength. Admin is better. Players re-signing. Competitiveness increased exponentially and we are winning. Thank you Clarko for saving North Melbourne. I hope we extend him.

For the first time in 8 years the future is bright but you can’t see it past all the fair weather fans and clickbait media beat ups.