Ask the majority of North Melbourne fans who ‘Pagan’s Paddock’ was built for, and the answer you’ll receive is ‘Wayne Carey’.

But the truth is far different. An anecdote in a recent Russell Jackson column on the Guardian Australia website set off conversation at Arden Street.

‘Pagan’s Paddock’ (the man himself, Denis Pagan, called it the far less catchy ‘three-quarter-ground concertina’) was originally devised to exploit the pace of then-North Melbourne Under-19 forward Leigh Tudor, not its better-known beneficiary Wayne Carey.

Tudor, now an assistant coach at North Melbourne, downplayed how the tactic originated.

“The way I remember is that he (Denis) simply said to push all the forwards up and try to get them out the back running on to it,” Tudor told NMFC.com.au.

“Back then, the player-coach relationship was very much they (coaches) said and you just did what you were told.”

However, it was Tudor who was regarded as an extremely quick forward and ended up being one of the players who benefited the most from the tactic. He approached the 50-goal mark in each of his junior seasons, playing as a half-forward with occasional stints on the wing.

After crossing from the Essendon zone to play Under 19’s at the Kangaroos, Tudor got revenge on the Bombers later on.

“We won Grand Finals in 1987 and 1988, beating Richmond at Waverley and Essendon at the MCG,” he said.

“We had a really good side, a lot of those Under 19 players went on to play in senior Grand Finals.

“There was Anthony Rock, Jose Romero, Wayne Schwass, Mick Martyn all forward.”

While Tudor graduated to the senior side and ended up playing nine games in four years for the Kangaroos, the ‘paddock’ tactic laid dormant, seemingly kept under wraps by Pagan.

Pagan became the senior coach in 1993, only months after Tudor left for Geelong. Some speculated that he wouldn’t have allowed the pacy forward to leave for the Cats if he had been coach at the time of the trade.

In hindsight, it perhaps could have prevented one of the more heartbreaking moments in North history – Tudor’s floating kick to Gary Ablett in the dying stages of the 1994 preliminary final.

At the stage of the finish, Pagan had been coach of North for two full seasons, with no sight of the tactic he used to great effect in the juniors. It took another 18 months for it to make its first appearance at AFL level, in what would eventually end up being a premiership year.

As Darren Crocker picks up the story, he reflects on 1996 after a belting at the hands of Sydney in Round 11.

“It was the first time we’d ever encountered a team really dropping numbers back against us and basically surrounding Wayne Carey,” Crocker explained.

“Basically what the opposition and Rodney Eade (Sydney coach) were doing, they were using Carey as a reference point. Thinking we’d always go forward and kick it to him, in that particular game they played with eight defenders.

“They brought two wingers back, brought their half forwards up to the wing and only played with four genuine forwards.”

Sydney’s excellent performances in 1996 came as a bit of a surprise. The Swans hadn’t made a finals appearance in nearly a decade. Coming off only eight wins in 1995, Eade had taken over the reins from Ron Barassi for 1996.

After losing the first two games of the season, they caught fire, losing only one of their next 14.

In James Coventry’s excellent new book, Time and Space, Eade describes how the Round 2 loss was the catalyst for the run.

“It wasn’t until Round 3 against Collingwood that our players embraced the idea and implemented it en masse, even to the point of players running 60 to 80 metres – two, even three times – to block space.”

Using what was a revolutionary tactic – at the time sides rarely strayed from playing six forwards, six defenders and six midfielders – it benefited both sides of the ground as Crocker explained.

“It did two things. Not only did it crowd our forward line and make it hard for Duck, it also gave Tony Lockett a lot of extra space to work in.”

It was Lockett who tore apart the Kangaroos in Round 11, kicking 10 goals. Although he somehow only finished with one Brownlow vote, his influence was clear.

Nevertheless, North retreated to the training track and worked on ways to combat the Swans’ extra defenders.

“So from that time on, we started to play around with bringing everyone up in front of Duck so he was basically the last forward, closest to the goal,” Crocker explained.

“Even if he was surrounded by numbers, instead of kicking it to him we’d kick it to the space over the back of him. That would then give the likes of Brett Allison, Peter Bell, Robert Scott, Glenn Freeborn, really quick types running onto the ball in the space.

“When we did kick it to him, even if he didn’t mark it he’d always bring it to ground. Then when the ball was at his feet, we could surge it on into that space behind him and get scoring opportunities.”

Although North lost three more games during the regular season, the tinkering with its forward setup began to pay dividends as September approached.

A 21 goal effort against Richmond in Round 22 was the prelude to three successive scores – all finals victories – of more than 110 points, including the sweetest one of all, a 43-point win against Sydney in the Grand Final.

However, an unfortunate post-script to the tale means we’ve been deprived of the opportunity to learn more about the tactic and how the team of the 90’s learned to implement it.

In 2006 a fire destroyed two portable buildings at Arden Street – the facilities of the coaches before the current day redevelopment.

“I’d kept everything Denis had given me in a couple of boxes,” Crocker added.

“In those boxes were the handouts when we started using the Pagan’s Paddock, and I kept it in the portables we used back in the day.

“Then when the fire came, we lost everything inside the portables which meant I lost the boxes full of what Denis had taught me.”