There was always something amiss with the AFL’s lucrative offer to North for a move to the Gold Coast in 2007; something James Brayshaw never felt easy about. 

"The maths never really added up to me, to be honest," James Brayshaw said. 

"A lot of the presentation was around the mythical amount of money. I remember looking at it, thinking 'you can't guarantee that stadium, that's a huge part of making this work financially, and it is not there'. 

"(It was like) 'This stadium you keep talking about, you haven't actually got it, and you can't guarantee it. None of these numbers will actually work without it'."

Brayshaw and his brother Mark openly discuss the machinations behind the clubs rejection of the $100 million lure in a revealing documentary ‘Keeping North South’ (KNS) to be aired on Fox Footy and North’s website this week. 

"There was one key they couldn't satisfy and it ended up being a bullet that the Gold Coast Suns just dodged and that is of all the modelling they did, they couldn't resolve the question of what rent they were going to have to pay on the ground," Mark Brayshaw said.

For the first time, key figures from both sides speak out about the AFL’s failed bid, including then league CEO Andrew Demetriou, who remains as bullish as ever about the money on offer. 

"It is always good to have a nice big round number, so if you total what the stadium was going to bring, if you totalled the package which had an eradication of debt and money going into the bank, you could easily get to the $100 million,” Demetriou says with a smirk.

"I am pretty sure it was the right number."

Keeping North South screens on Fox Footy on Tuesday at 9pm and will be available on NMFC.com.au from Wednesday.