North Melbourne held a special Q & A for its members and supporters on Friday afternoon.
Below is the full transcript from the chat.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
The first question comes from Paul Kinnane. Can you all please sell me the decisions the club has made as it's been a little bit of doom and gloom in the media and it's been a bit overwhelming.
Ben Amarfio:
We don't buy into a lot of the doom and gloom. I mean, the media likes to play things up. We've got a story to sell and we get that and the old adage, "Things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem. It's always somewhere in between." And then there's been a period of time where we went out of the talk as well, which that created the vacuum, and created more voices, and all the rest of it, we get it. But hopefully we're through that period and we're being strong and bold, led by our chairman (Ben Buckley), and he made some strong statements in the last couple of weeks. The boys on this call have all been very busy in the background working towards this trade period. We want to get in and talk about that, because that's the exciting stuff. The exciting stuff is all about the work that we're doing to build for the future. We're not looking at any sort of sugar hit, any short term thing here. This is going to take a while and we're all committed to it and we're all … I think Scotty (Clayton) was just saying a second ago, we're all methodically working on a long term plan. Some of the decisions you've seen already and some of those decisions have been very painful for us to make, but these are the decisions we need to make to turn the club around.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Randall Fernando wants to hear a little bit more about the Arden Precinct plan and how we are positioning our club to play a greater role in the community. From a cultural perspective, what are we doing at a strategy level to attract a greater member base?
Ben Amarfio:
The Victorian government is looking to finalize the plans, probably early next year. We're hoping that'd be later this year, but it'll probably be early of next year now. That's the plans for the whole sort of Precinct that we sit in around North Melbourne, so it's North Melbourne, it's the Arden North they call it, Arden Central as well, which is the area we're in where the new train station will be and we are considered to be in Arden North. It's very exciting. We put a very compelling pitch to the government. I think it was about a 143-page document in the end that we submitted and it meets the needs of our community, the North Melbourne community, the Flemington, Kensington, our backyard. It's important that we met the needs of the community, but also met the expansion needs of The Huddle and the North Melbourne Football Club. Talking to that extra point about what's our role in the community, through The Huddle we see our role is servicing the needs of the community as best we can and that is essentially trying to help people with education, help young people around with jobs, mental health support and these sorts of things.
We're in regular contact, we've done a lot with the key stakeholders at ... not just in the community, but also at local and state government. It's very exciting. It'll help setup the club. It'll help setup the community for the next 30, 40, 50 years, so we're really looking forward to that. It will mean greater recreation space, greater community services, residential development and all the rest of it, so very exciting stuff.
In terms of the membership stuff, well, at the end of the day the best way to grow our membership base is to get the football program right and to win. We get that and we're going to talk a little bit about that today as well. We've got a long term plan that will see us over the next three or four years continually build and build and build until we get that sustainable success that we're looking for. The guys have done a power of work in the background and you're starting to see some of the fruits of that and you've seen what's happened in the last 24 hours and what's happened over the last couple of weeks as well. We'll let the list management guys talk to that in more detail.
All of those things combined with targeting a new generation of fans, relaunching our brand, creating a greater awareness and excitement about what we do, all of that will hopefully lead to a larger membership base.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Brady, next questions for you from Matt Stevens. You selected a whole cohort of coaches last year and fired almost all of them. How can we as members trust the leadership to make the right choices this time around?
Brady Rawlings:
I think a lot of it is around the COVID cuts that were implemented on each club. We had a restriction on what we could spend on a monthly basis during the COVID period, and then the soft cap cuts at the end of this year, obviously played a big part on the amount of coaches that we have on our books as well. It's not just purely about cutting based on performance. It was a head count we had to get down to. The other part of it is we're not going to apologize for trying to get better. We got John Blakey in, we targeted him, and to bring someone of John's calibre and experience into the club, something had to give as well. We're really, really excited by having John Blakey in. We've kept our development team with Gavin Brown and Leigh Adams, and Brent Harvey in their roles, and we've got a couple more assistants to lock in as well, once we make the senior coach appointment. In terms of making the right decisions, our process we've certainly looked at to make sure that we go through the right channels and do background checks.
We've got a panel at the moment obviously that's working towards appointing the senior coach and then the senior coach will have some involvement in the assistants that he brings along with him. We're excited by it, we think the process is a really good one. We've got a strong panel and we're confident that we'll have a great team of coaches to get the best out of our playing group.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Rachael Peters just asked: How many candidates are we interviewing? What's the process? How's it going? Is there a mix of new and experienced within that? I know there's probably not a whole lot you can say because we obviously need to keep the integrity of that process intact and the confidentiality of those going for the job, but is there anything that you can sort of add there, just for the members to know how it's going?
Brady Rawlings:
Yeah, definitely. I think the main thing is that we didn't look at one type of coach in this process. We wanted to scour the competition, even outside of the competition and look at left field candidates as well. We didn't want to miss out on a potential coach that’d be a great fit for us in North Melbourne. We didn't look purely at age or purely at experience in the senior coaching role. We looked at all different types of candidates, so we really cast a net for potential candidates and then we started to narrow in on the ones we'd like to take to phase one. The panel's been together for two to three weeks now, very collaborative process. We come up with a criteria that we want to select our coach on, and yeah, we're really confident, the position we're currently in, that within the next week to two we hope to narrow that down and hopefully will announce the senior coach within maybe a fortnight.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Okay. Matt Nolan, and also Madeleine Alderson both probably their questions are somewhat similar. You did address a little bit of Matt's question, which is: What's the key experience criteria for the coaching selection panel and are we leaning towards someone with prior experience? Madeleine wants to know why Lisa Alexander, the former couch of the netball, the Australian Diamonds was rejected as a head coach.
Number one, is experience one of the criteria, football coaching experience, and does that then sort of marry into why Lisa was probably not successful?
Brady Rawlings:
Well, the AFL senior coaching experience, I mean in terms of having a senior coaching role, is not a prerequisite for us. We want to appoint the right coach. We don't want to be missing out on the candidates there that hasn't had experience in the senior coaching role before, but would be a great coach for us in the future. We didn't want to discount ourselves from that scenario, but we certainly want someone that's been around football for a long period of time and has that football experience in the coaching ranks, so whether it be an assistant coach that's been around for ten to 15 years in football and has experienced a lot of different roles whether it be senior assistant, midfield, forward, back, head of development, whatever it might be, but we had a criteria where it needed to tick that football box. Lisa's CV was outstanding; we had a good look at that and considered that next phase, but as I said, we set a criteria well before that, that the football experience really needed to be there.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Xavier Sellings says that he's pretty excited about the future and the young talented plays coming through, but just wants to know, and it's a question we get a lot: Why can't the club land a big fish? What is it about our club that makes no one want to come here? What needs to change? Now, I probably will say that Xavier's question may have come before the end of the trade period yesterday where we landed four players. But what do you have to say to that?
Brady Rawlings:
We’re certainly excited by the youth at our club as well. We feel like we're getting ourselves into a position where we’ll certainly have the most, probably 22 and under players in the competition, but we want to get to the level where we've got the best 22 and unders as well coming through, then in the next two to three years, they're 23, 24, 25 year-olds that played a lot of football together and they're coming through at the same time. That's obviously Glenn (Luff) and Scott (Clayton) will speak a bit more about the list management strategy today, but that's certainly what we're trying to achieve in terms of getting that youth thing together. We feel like we're well towards doing that. In terms of the big fish, I know in the past there’s certainly been plays for some top end talent, and so there should be. You know, you want to get the best players into the footy club. We've been together for about 12 months as a list management team. We've got a strategy in place. As you've said, we've just bought four new players into our club.
We want to keeping added to that over the coming years and we think we've got a lot to offer as a footy club. We think when we start to perform the way we expect to out on the field, that will make us a lot more attractive as well. We think as a footy club we've got a lot to offer players ... we've got a club that's 151 years old. We've got so much culture and history. We're one kilometre out of the city. We're primed to grow in that area as well in the Arden Precinct and we've got terrific people at our club, so part of the attraction over the last few months, even longer, when we've been talking to players, is not just about who coaches our team, it's about the wider football department and also our board and exec team as well, so we've had John Blakey and Gavin Brown be involved in pitches to players along with our list management guys. You know, we've had our players involved.
In terms of what we've got to offer to players, we think we've got plenty to offer, but we want to make sure that our performances on field make us even more attractive as well.
Glenn Luff:
I think it's important to look at what happened over the trade period. We have brought in four players and they are four players that have got a specific role to play in our list build. We looked at our defence and we needed to stock up there and we’ve been able to bring in Aidan Corr, who was one of the early names in our boardroom, we’ve been able to attract him. Lachie Young, we think was underutilised and we brought him in. Then, the other thing was speed in the front half of the ground and Jaidyn Stephenson and Atu bring that. While we talk about big fish, it's all about the list of 44 that you've got to fill and get the right players in and we’ve been able to bring in four players that have got a specific job description for this list.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
A question from Mark Walsh, and one that we do get a lot and I think that as a club we've constantly answered this one, but we'll keep answering it. Will North Melbourne stay in Victoria or will we relocate to Tasmania?
Ben Amarfio:
Short answer is yes. Yes Mark, we'll stay in Victoria. I think our chairman has been on the record, the public record several times, at least in the last 12 months stating that this board has no desire to relocate the club permanently to Tasmania. Having said that, we see Tasmania as our second home. We play, our AFL team plays four games a year down there, and hopefully next year as well and our AFLW team plays a couple of games, two games down there in Tassie as well. I think the girls haven't lost a game in Tassie yet, and our men, I think we're over 60 per cent win rate. I think it's been higher than that. So we love Tassie and we love our visitations there, whether it's playing games or engaging with community and doing community outreach or working with sponsors and relating to our members and playing our game down there for our pre-season camps, our community camps. We love Tassie - we want to do more and we want to really build it up as a real effective and genuine second home for us and use it as a competitive advantage, but as I said, where the board's at and where the chairman's at Arden Street’s home for us.
Brady was just talking about our history, 151 years. I was talking earlier before about the Arden Street Precinct and the plans for the next ten, 20, 50 years, so we are setting our roots down in Arden street.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Brady, can you please describe how we're making sure the women's competition is prioritised as much as the men's going into 2021? That comes from Justine McSweeney.
Brady Rawlings:
Since day dot our AFLW program probably been the envy of the competition, from my knowledge. Our players couldn't be happier at Arden Street; we’ve got terrific facilities for the AFLW program. They've got access to great resources compared to some other situations across the land. I think the level of content with our players probably shows how much we put into the AFLW program. We've got a great list. We've got great people involved and I think we as a club promote our AFLW team as well as anyone. We're really proud of our players and what they do out on the field - over the last couple of years we’ve been one of the real strong performers in this competition, and we think that will continue for the future years too, given how strong our list is and we've been able to keep our team together. Similar to the men's program, we haven't got players that want to leave our club, which probably goes to show how much we value our AFLW program.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Now, this next question comes from Romeo Micomonaco. He's a passionate member for the last five years, including his daughters, but he hasn't re-signed this coming season due to COVID circumstances. We hope you're going all right, Romeo and the family. Although we'll be happy to do so, if we could please give supporters more information about where the club is headed … like I said, I'll throw that open to anyone to jump in and sell the club to Romeo and family.
Scott Clayton:
Clearly I've been at North Melbourne from basically December, so I'm new, but I can tell you the couple of months that we were able to go into the office, the first thing that was so evident to me was, Shinboner is real. It's in the air. I could smell it. And the way people behave, I've certainly bought into that from day one, this club's got something special going on. There's no, absolutely no question about that. The other thing that really surprised me, non footy related, The Huddle, what we do in the community arm, I've never seen anything like it and the benefit to our players and how it grounds them and the education it gets them, what we actually do out there, so just a couple of non-footy related things to start with.
This new list-management team, as upsetting as it was that we lost a couple of great members in Trent and Ben through COVID, as did many clubs, so a shout-out to them, but in this space we have the most fun - spirit and morale is through the roof. We've got a very planned and methodical approach. As we mentioned about four years and then we've sort of cut it into half a little bit, because two drafts are now as long as you can look forward to … every small decision fits a big decision and it just makes work exciting.
The other thing is, when you decide to effect change, it's just, it's get up and go. We understand that. Some of the stuff we've done already that just gets smashed is ... and we're sitting, thinking, "We're laying an unbelievable foundation here”. We had the most 26-29 players in the comp, and some great people, don't get me wrong. A lot were sort of underplayed, as in didn't play enough - we had to change. Here we roll out a plan where we have to make list changes and we move 11, and we know according to that, that list sizes are coming down. Our intel from the AFL is that COVID list size is coming down, so we planned for that. We planned for the fact that there's going to be other times to bring in players other than this period.
There's going to be a mid-season draft probably. There's going to be a supplemental selection period opportunity in pre-season to get the people to train with you and then put on the list. We're planning for all these things. As we say, to this point we've brought in three players, traded, and a delisted, and a free agent. This was all planned and all the work that we've done with Corr and all that, Corr and others, has been going for months. It's just been fun to be involved. As much as bringing the players in during this week has been so much fun, this is on the platform we’re going to the draft and there it gets really exciting. We'll have five picks in whenever it's going to be in early December and then we're looking at the numbers of draftable players over two years, this year and next, and they'll probably be four next year. It's so set out. We're so excited, and that's part of ... Someone said, "What should be a KPI for North Melbourne?", which is not for me to work out player wise, but I just want at some stage next year, mid-year, and supporters go, "Gee, North Melbourne's exciting." And I'm very confident that will happen.
Glenn Luff:
Just in terms of the list and the youth in the team, we've had five rising stars over the last two years, which is the equal-most of any club in the competition. Mark Finnigan and his team have done an enormous job. Four of those players were 45-plus in the draft and you add in Tarryn Thomas. Those five don't include Jy Simpkin and Luke Davies-Uniacke, who were injured at the time when it was around the qualification for that, so you add those two. Then, we add in Jaidyn Stephenson, who actually won a rising star … there's a big block of youth coming through there and we've got a really good draft hand this year, so as Scotty said, exciting, that is the word that we've been throwing around the office for the last couple of days. It is genuinely exciting for all of us involved.
Scott Clayton:
The other thing I'll just finish off saying is that something not to be underestimated, in the industry we have terrific relationships with key stakeholders and that's player, managers, and agents. We've rolled out our demographic, ‘Luffy’ and Brady in regards to our plan and where it's going. We're getting buy-in like you wouldn't believe. That's really important.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
This is from David Jackson. Understanding that there might be some on field pain coming in '21 and '22, you might disagree with that and please do if you feel that way. What are the plans beyond that when a number of senior players will be hanging up the boots, i.e., Todd Goldstein, Robbie Tarrant, Jack Ziebell etc.?
Glenn Luff:
I'll argue the pain comment, I think we'll bounce next year. The facts are, as Scotty said before, that we had the most 26 to 29 year-olds in the competition and we finished 17th, so it was a clear indication that we needed some change. While there were some players that exited, we've still got a lot of experience in that area and some club champions that are going to be here for two, three years time to help this really exciting youth coming through. I'd argue that for the first point with the pain, again, I think we've mentioned it before, planned and methodical, and that's what it is. That includes replacing our champion players that do end up finishing. A great example of that is Aidan Corr. We recognize that in the back half we have a few guys that might only have two to three years left. Aidan Corr was huge. The free agency age of a player is 26, 27, and if they're getting picked up at free agency they're proven players, so you're going to have them for five or six years.
Aidan Corr, classic example of being planned to replace certain players, and Todd Goldstein’s got two or three years left … we've got Tristen Xerri in the background who we will develop into the next ruckman, so it's planned and methodical in terms of filling all the spots on the list.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
A lot of members want to know about Ben Brown and what happened there, and Justin Kelly’s one of them. Can you explain why Ben Brown fell out of favour and why we took the approach by telegraphing that he was up for trade early and therefore diluting his trade value?
Brady Rawlings:
Obviously Ben was a player that we were trying to sign during the pre-season, going into 2020. We were a little bit apart in terms of the tenure, so then COVID hit and we had to take that contract off the table. There was obviously a negotiation part that led to what it led to, but also Ben's form throughout the year was obviously not ideal for him and for us, and he had injuries and some personal things going on as well. Towards the end of the year when you weigh everything up, and Ben's 29 next year as well, but the four-year commitment that his management wanted was probably not what we agreed to as a list management team and in terms of telegraphing the messaging and diluting the trade value, I'm not too sure about that, but Ben had one suitor at the end of the year in the Melbourne Footy Club and we thought as a footy club that moving forward, if we could look at something to bring in for Ben and he could get a four-year somewhere else and we look to the future in terms of going to the draft and bringing in other players, then that was the position we were in.
In terms of the trade value this week, it could be looked at that we didn't get a terrific outcome for Ben, but the way we look at the whole trade period is the net result at the end of the period and we knew that what we were talking about with Melbourne we could then on-trade to Collingwood and bring in two players with Stevo and Atu, who are both 21 and under, but hopefully play a lot of footy for us. At the end of the day, it's Ben Brown to Jaidyn Stephenson and Atu, is how we looked at it. Ben has been a phenomenal player for our club and he's a terrific person and he's done so much for us. That cannot be underestimated. He’ll always be a terrific player for our footy club. Moving forward we felt that by bringing those two in for Ben Brown was good for our future as well.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Brades, I just want to pick you up on that bit about telegraphing the situation, because I think it's a bit of a myth. Once you have the discussion with a player that you might want to move that player on or it might be in their best interest to have a little look around, obviously their manager starts talking to other clubs. In terms of telegraphing it, all those other clubs find out pretty quickly that Ben Brown's looking for a new home, right?
Brady Rawlings:
Yeah, that's right. Any player that's out of contract, the managers are out doing their work. It's nothing new at the end of the season when Ben didn't have a contract offer, because we were so far apart in terms of tenure. Every club out there knew the situation that was going on with us and Ben. It was nothing new to other clubs. Clubs have been doing their work on Ben all year, knowing that contract negotiation had broken down.
Scott Clayton:
It’s a difficult circumstance, because we see the opposite happen last night at another club who had players up for trade, that they didn't alert people and they were all annoyed.
Ben Amarfio:
I don't think you look at these situations in isolation. A lot of these deals are connected too, so to look at a Ben Brown or any other deal in isolation is probably not the best way to look at all of these deals. You've got to look at the totality, and it becomes academic as well, because at the end of the day it's just a number, right? We get, what is it? 26 for Ben Brown, which gets on-traded to Collingwood. Let's say we did a little bit better and we got 24 or 22 or whatever the number was. That ends up going to Collingwood anyway, so it actually becomes, it's academic. It becomes immaterial what the number is, because it's part of a bigger story and a bigger play. Does that make sense?
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Absolutely. Yeah. Maybe Glenn or Scotty or Brady can answer a question here about Shaun Higgins. Simon Gatt: What was the reasoning behind training Shaun and when was the club aware that he was wanting to be traded out as well. Brades, I think you've mentioned before about the discussion that maybe took place with you at the end of the year, but Luffy and Scott jump in if you want to clarify why ‘Higgo’ was traded.
Brady Rawlings:
I've been in these discussions with ‘Higgo’ for 12 months. He was out of contract at the end of last year and we had really open and honest discussions then with Shaun. He's had a great attitude ever since my involvement at the footy club, given that whatever's best for the club that's what he would look at. We thought the best thing for the club 12 months ago was for Shaun to sign for two years and if we had a different approach I think he would have been open to looking at that as well. We signed him up for two years, 12 months later, we've come 17th. He's got twins on the way he's obviously a Geelong boy. There's some family circumstances that were occurring as well, but I think when we signed Shaun for the two years, we were hopeful that this season was going to go a lot better than what it did, and then we get to the end of the year and we're sitting down the bottom of the ladder and Shaun's got one year left of a contract and could probably get two years elsewhere.
Shaun's 33 next year and a little bit similar to Ben; if we could get something for Shaun and appease him and his management and his family, but we could get a sound-rounder in as well and hopefully use that to get further up with the draft order or bring a player in that plays for the next eight to 10 years hopefully, that's Luffy, Scotty and Finn's job, that now could be a win, win for both. He has been such a star for our club. We've lost two players there that have done so much for our footy club and that is never going to be underestimated by all of these people on the screen, and I know all of our members as well. When we're looking to the future as well and looking at who's going to be our next premiership team and we've got to look at these draft picks and bring in other players that are going to get us to where we need to get to.
Scott Clayton:
I think the responsibility certainly to Shaun, because one of the things we stand for is family and for his family and children that were coming, it was the right thing to do. But more than that, for us as a footy club, for the growth and the change that we needed to effect, that's in list spots and it's also in dollars, so cut to the chase. TPP money out gives you a chance, so you can’t hide away from this in both of these situations. The other thing is to the rest of the playing group, Shaun has one year left, so he has 20 games left basically at the footy club. We're obliged for the rest of the playing group to go and to look to move him, so instead of getting 20 games, we'd do a deal that turns that into 100 games. We're obliged to everyone to do the best thing for all of us.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
A question here from Dan Polidano: I'd like to commend you all for having the conviction to make some hard decisions, despite media criticism. Maybe this one for you, Luffy. How will the forward like look in 2021? How's Charlie Comben traveling? Is he likely to be a regular next year?
Glenn Luff:
It's going to be a unique forward-line. You try and predict where the game's heading and definitely it's a more athletic game and we really are excited about the thought of our forward-line. I mean, we talk about rising stars - four or five of the rising stars are in that front half. Nick Larkey's career to date is as good as any key forward at his age, so he's done an enormous job. I think the first thought of the supporters is who's going to mark the ball, who's going to have that aerial presence? Well, Charlie's that modern-day, athletic competitor, that when it hits the deck he pressures like a guy that's 175 centimetres. We can't wait for Charlie to come along. We've got high hopes for him, but we've all seen Tarryn Thomas play, a forward who can mark the ball and he's elite at ground level. Curtis Taylor’s the same, Jack Mahony’s had plenty of footy this year. We add Jaidyn Stephenson with that front half speed. Atu’s got the speed and the power. The forward-line will be a different looking North Melbourne forward-line, but teams have proven that you can win it in any way.
You have to cash in on the assets that you've got and play to a game that suits your list. There's no cookie-cutter type stuff with list management now. Richmond proved that you could win it with one tall a few years ago. As long as the talent’s there and you're getting good supply from up the ground, you'll kick goals. It's a real exciting forward-line going forward.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Brady, what is the latest on Ben Cunnington's fitness? That's from Matt Stephens.
Brady Rawlings:
‘Cunners’ progressed really well in the second half of the year, obviously not to a level to be able to play footy, but being in the hub and seeing him go through his program, he progressed to some reasonable speed with his running over that period and got some really good volume in as well. It was all about strengthening his quad muscles towards the end of the year and it wasn't as much of a hip-flex or a back issue - it was more just about strengthening up his legs.
In the off season he's had a program- that hasn't stopped. He's a pro and he's certainly been out on the boat and getting plenty of fishing in, which hopefully isn't having any effect on his back. He’s going really well. We don’t get ‘Cunners’ back until January, along with the other five year plus players, but our high performance team are obviously in regular contact with him to make sure that come January he's firing and getting back out there and playing some good footy for us, because we know how important he is for us as one of the best inside-mids in the competition. Short answer is, he's coming along well.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Guys, we don't have Mark Finnigan, our National Recruiting Manager on this call, but you can answer this one on his behalf. It comes from Neil Smith. What confidence do we have in making good draft selections given the impact of the pandemic on football leagues across the country? And obviously Neil's talking to the fact that we haven't been able to see a lot of the kids play, because thee competitions haven't been running.
Scott Clayton:
Clearly it's not ideal. So live viewing has been non-existent for us, basically, other than a couple of runs to the country area when that was open months ago. We saw a couple of players, but we're very confident. Brady came out with a good call … because we trade future picks, we trade a year in advance, so if you do that as a base, you've got to scout futures. We know them as a 17-year-old, but we have between us watched just hours and hours and hours of vision, whole of games, edited stuff, very professional in what we've got available to us and vehicles to watch staff and the data that we get, and we'd just like to see them in the flesh if we could, before the draft, which we will. There's vision from combines and stuff like that, so we've done a mountain of work. We've watched so much. We're very confident. We like the draft pool. We love where our picks have settled, and that's not over yet, because you can trade picks right up to the draft. We're really well placed, and all I can say is the absolute work's been done and we'll be organized.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Luffy, there's another question. It doesn't have a name attached to it, unfortunately, but it because says, because you’re a data nerd: How much emphasis do you put into data from under 16 and under 17 competitions?
Glenn Luff:
I do get tagged with the data questions all the time. The data's one piece of the big jigsaw puzzle. There's match data, there's GPS data, there’s psych data, but then you've got vision and then the interview process. We've interviewed over 70 players over Zoom, which we thought might have been a bit difficult over at the start of the year, but it's actually worked out pretty well, so there's a lot to look into. The thing with our list management team, it's a really unique skill-set across the team. Obviously I've got the data background. Scotty's got the 30 years of experience. Brady's been a list manager before and Finn's (Mark Finnigan) got his ten years of experience, so all that gets thrown into the melting pot and that's how you come up with the decisions. Yeah, the data's there - we clearly look at from under 16s and 17-year-old players as well. It's all part of it.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Josh Bosnar just wants to know what our three biggest positional needs in the upcoming draft are.
Glenn Luff:
I think at the start of the year we really identified speed, particularly through the midfield and the front half and we've addressed that with two players in the trade period. The back half is also ... we've needed to look forward in terms of two, three, four-years time with the back line, because we had a lot of those 28-pluses in that area. We've addressed two of those, so we've brought in Corr as I explained before and Lachie Young. I think we feel like the list build’s a lot more balanced than what it was 12 months ago. We'll have a draft order and early with your first two or three picks, it's the best talent, and from there we'll get a little bit more specific about needs. We'll be rating the draft, our top 50 to 60 players and we'll be working to that.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Scott, Luffy sort of touched on it before, but Simon Barnes wants to know how long do we think the rebuild will take? Richmond were aggressive with their five year plan, will we be doing the same? What's your take on that? How long could the bounce-back take?
Scott Clayton:
I'm confident it won't be as long as predicted. Our age demographic is actually really good. We're not going all the way back down to be the youngest team in the comp - it's not where we're at. Gold Coast now, their demographic’s there. We're going to go down a little bit and then it flattens, but talking about data again, but the age demographic which is a measurement of experience and age, AFL games and age, that's very promising. In the next two or three years there will be a sweet spot again. There's a demographic that Luffy runs on sort of grand final teams on where they're won and the two grand finalists, and we're not below. We're not far below that line. In over 20 years that's covered so it stands the test of time and there's only two sort of winners outside of that. I get sort of funny when everyone wants to know, "Are you in rebuild mode or in premiership mode?”. They're not mutually exclusive. It's just they're inextricably linked and the fact is you're always re-building and you're always ... unless you continually go to the draft and bring in players from below, you run into a dead end.
You should always be ... we're trying to win, don't get us wrong. Whether we're good enough, of course that's probably not in the next two minutes, but always in premiership mode, always in development or re-build mode simultaneously for mine.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Thomas Norman's just asking specifically: How would Jaidyn Stephenson be used in the forward line? And also about Lachie Young and Aidan Corr and their roles in defence. Can you give us a bit of an idea of what we expect from them and how they'll be used?
Glenn Luff:
Yeah, obviously Jaidyn's played a lot of his AFL footy from the square and he's very good at it, because of his speed and his ability to turn his player around. We think he's got a bit of scope to play a bit higher, whether it's high half-forward as well, and then the potential to play a bit of wing and inside-mid. In his under 18 or junior profile was ... I remember saying it at the time, I hadn't seen anything like it. He played as a goal-kicker in his bottom, bottom age and then the same as a bottom age. Then, played on a wing in the national championships and then played as an inside/outside-midfielder in the second half of his last junior year and regularly got 30-plus touches and won his own footy and kicked goal. He was a really unique player at draft time. He probably hasn't been given the opportunity to show those other things that he can do. Yes, we've got him in as a forward with speed and ability to put pressure on, but we think down the track with some development that he can pinch-hit in the midfield, no doubt about that.
Scott Clayton:
It's interesting that year, TAC Cup as it was called in those days … the two best inside, outside mids for the back half of that draft year was LDU (Luke Davies-Uniacke) and Jaidyn Stephenson. I'm pretty excited about that prospect, to be honest.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
And so what about Aidan Corr and Lachie Young then, Luffy, in terms of their roles?
Glenn Luff:
We've tracked Aidan since, I think it was day two into the job we were talking about Aidan Corr and going to ... I didn't know a heap about him, but to watch him live in the Marsh Series and then early in the season I was staggered at how quick he was. His ability to defend, and he just defends with intent, but the beauty about Aidan is you talk about the modern game where forward lines are potentially getting smaller and quicker - Aidan can play on talls, he can play on smalls and that's a big reason why the Giants really loved him. We just see Aidan as being that flexible defender that can plan all types. He's a real general as well. He controls and he's very vocal out there and organising the rest of the back-line. We're really excited to have him on board. Lachie we think will be a higher defender. He's got a beautiful kick on him. We saw in his AFL game this year that he can run all day, but we think he's a player that will be able to intercept the ball and really use the ball well. Scotty might be able to talk about Lachie more because he's really tracked him heavily over the last three years. There's a job description for all those guys. That's where they'll be.
Scott Clayton:
I think Lachie starts at half-back, perhaps the highest, clearly the coaches have a lot to do with this, but he's athletically quite elite. He can really run. We've got to utilise his strength there, we’d like him to be confident to leave and go across and mark it. And then he's got a kick that really, it's a punchy kick. It gets there really quickly, so there's just some confidence and some gains and you know there's a real upside there.
Host: Heath O'Loughlin:
Ben, you wanted to do this question and answer session with these guys, specifically after the trade periods to open up to the fans and give them insight into the decision making and credit to all you guys for bringing the North fans into the tent on that. Peter Watson has asked though, Ben, I believe going forward it would serve members well if there could be future questions and answers ideally at the start of the season and possibly the mid-point of the season, finally at season’s end. Is this something that we can commit to?
Ben Amarfio:
We'd love to do more of these. This is the first and hopefully the first of many. It's all up to the members and supporters. If they, if this resonates and this is something that the fans get value out of, then I'm happy to do these every month. I mean our club doesn't exist without the supporters. We've seen that this year. How drab and how deflating and disappointing was it playing in those empty stadiums without supporters and members. It was awful. The supporters and members are the lifeblood of this club and if they feel as though they get some value out of more productivity with us and the club, then we'll be here every month.
