It’s great to welcome all of you here to our Round 18 clash against Hawthorn. I’d particularly like to welcome the Spirit of Tasmania’s Chief Operating Officer, John McGrath, and everyone else from the Spirit, who continue to be a wonderful partner to our club.  

A particular welcome to everyone from the Hawthorn Football Club, especially Chairman Andy Gowers and his wife Anna, and Hawks Interim CEO Ash Klein.  

When our two clubs met earlier this year down in Launceston, I was stuck on the couch recovering from surgery and you got the win – I’m hoping today for a different result. I’ve done my bit and I’m off the couch, it’s up to the players to do the rest.

Since that game in Round 3, North has gone on to lose 14 games in a row – which has made for a frankly frustrating season. Of course, the season isn’t over, and while our Round 3 encounter started a run of losses, I am ever the optimist. So perhaps today’s game will kick off a run of wins at the tail end of the season. Regardless of what happens, we need to take every bit of learning from every game this season, win or lose, and use it to push towards becoming better. 

The win / loss metric – while obviously the critical one in our game – is blunt and unforgiving. We’ve all seen wins that felt like losses, and losses that felt like moral victories. In a couple of hours of game time every week, little moments add up and become club history. 

The memories that we all share and talk about, which often have nothing to do with the result. First games – and haven’t we had some rippers this year – will always be the year of Harry and George. 

First goals – including Cooper Harvey’s last week. First runs, first tackles, first don’t argues. The first time you realise a player can actually play, and perhaps you’d better start to remember his name. 

For perspective, it’s worth remembering Robbie Tarrant who announced his retirement this week. Taz played 174 games for North before moving to Richmond in 2021 to undertake what I called at the time ‘two years of intensive opposition analysis’.

It’s good to remind ourselves that before he was a great of our club, Taz too just was a promising kid when he was drafted in 2007 to a club that was considered so hopeless that it was to be shunted off to the Gold Coast, and lost several of his first few years of football to shoulder reconstructions. I suspect there would have been plenty of pundits at the time writing off Taz – and North for that matter.

Today we welcome several players back into our side, including Jackson Archer for the first time this year after battling injuries from the pre-season, and Josh Goater for the first time since he injured his knee in Round 3. Both are – like Taz once was – promising kids, and along with plenty of players on our list, have exciting potential ahead of them. 

We’ve also got four father sons on the park today – along with Jackson Archer, there’s Cooper Harvey, Bailey Scott, and captain Luke McDonald – boys who have grown up bleeding blue and white, and now have the chance to play for the club they love.

And as we roll into Round 18, happy with progress and unhappy with results, frustrated about individual performances but simultaneously aware that those same performances are important steps in learning, I think we all know that we are watching our next crop of club greats develop before our eyes. 

As a club, we’re well on our way to our next period of success. We’ve got a young, exciting, developing list.  We’ve got some unbelievable experience within out football department.  Sponsors and members have stuck, because they know this down phase is temporary, and they want to be part of this whole journey – not just the good bit.

And if you want more proof of just how resilient our club is, I’d point to the other big change since our two teams met earlier this year – Alastair Clarkson stepping down as senior coach. 

Now I don’t want to pretend losing Clarko hasn’t hurt – it has, and it continues to. But we are not defined by the adversity we face. We’re defined by how we respond to that adversity.  

And so, led by Brett Ratten, Todd Viney, and Jen Watt, the club has continued on the steady “one club” path we set last year, continuing to develop players and the game plan, and enabling Clarko to take the time he needs, and to ensure he comes back 100% fit.

Two months ago when Clarko stood down, his physical and mental health was shot. His body was breaking down and his mind couldn’t function.  

I’m not going to detail what Clarko has been through over the past couple of months. If he chooses to tell his story eventually, that’s up to him. But here’s one simple example of how the physical and mental fed on each other. 

For Clarko, running has been a lifelong strategy to clear his mind, work through problems, deal with stress. Over this year, worsening back pain meant he couldn’t run, and this space, this coping mechanism, was suddenly not available to him at the time he needed it most. 

But he’d stopped getting help for the back, hadn’t noticed that the running had stopped because his mind was fixated elsewhere, hadn’t tuned into the pain, wasn’t sleeping properly so he couldn’t function . . .  and so every day he got up, and focused on just getting through without falling apart. Until he fell apart.

I can’t tell you yet when Clarko will be fully back in the senior coaching role. He’s working incredibly hard on his physical and mental health. He’s also back working hard  for our football club – for the moment, in a behind the scenes role. 

What I can tell you, is that he’s in much better shape than he was, and he and we are taking his return slowly and cautiously. As with everything else, we’re in this for the long game, not the short one.

I can also tell you that in our club, we’ll get both sides of this right – the mental and physical. And I’m not just talking about our coach – I’m talking about our players, our people, our whole club. We’ll take the time and the resources we need to take, with the goal every day to be better than the day before. 

Last week, in the dying minutes of the game against Geelong, which probably felt twice as long to us as it did to them, and in which we’d been comprehensively beaten, Cooper Harvey kicked his first goal – and every single one of our players got around him. That moment – and the symbolism of it – shouldn’t be lost on any of us. It shows that the spirit in our club is strong, that the group is building connection, resilience and the sort of pride in one another’s achievements that will ultimately underpin success. 

To all of us – let’s keep celebrating the small wins. The big wins will come. I’m so confident of that.  

Enjoy your day, may the best team win, and Go Roos.