‘As bad as it’s been’: Roos reality ‘stubborn’ Clarko can’t escape amid recruiting ‘doom loop’

A lack of tangible improvement at North Melbourne in year three under Alastair Clarkson continues to prompt concern after the club slumped to a disenchanting 101-point loss to Geelong last Saturday.

The Roos came into this season plotting substantive growth after back-to-back three-win, 17th-placed seasons. But after 20 rounds, they find themselves in 17th spot again with just one more win than in the previous two to show for their efforts.

Across the second and third quarters of its destructive Round 20 defeat, North Melbourne was outscored by 90 points; its worst differential over two quarters since 1985.

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It provides a nutshell glimpse into the prolonged defensive shortfalls at Arden Street, with these key numbers continuing to tell a grim story.

For points against, in the three seasons Clarkson has spent in charge, the Roos ranked 17th in 2023, 18th in 2024 and 17th this year.

For scores per inside-50 against, they’ve gone 17th, 18th and 17th. For intercept to score against: 17th, 18th, 17th. For clearance to score against: 17th, 18th, 18th.

On whether there has been discernable improvement to report over Clarkson’s time at the wheel, four-time premiership star and former Clarkson disciple Jordan Lewis told Fox Footy’s On the Couch: “The short answer is no.

“I think North Melbourne supporters ... you do need to see green shoots. You do need to see a mode in which they play — and there was probably a period this year that we could see ... they started to play some OK football you go ‘okay, that’s their identity’.

“The challenge with young sides is, as the season progresses, is not fatigue and not go back into skill execution errors which force you to play a messy game.

“You take a big risk when you get a premiership coach down who’s on a lot of money, and it might neglect other parts of your program. But listening to Alastair speak, they seem to understand where they’re at. We can’t see it.

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“I think their acquisitions, in terms of the senior players (Luke Parker, Jack Darling and Caleb Daniel), probably haven’t added as much or what they would have hoped for.”

Brisbane legend Jonathan Brown spoke of the absence of hope for fans, saying: “The thing you want to go to the footy, as a supporter, (needing to have) hope ... you walk in as a North Melbourne supporter, and you just go ‘where’s the hope?

“(George) Wardlaw definitely stands out, but he’s got the concussion issues. I know (Harry) Sheezel and (Colby) McKercher have been there, but they just lack a bit of that for me at the moment. It’s certainly going to be a challenging 12 months for ‘Clarko’.”

On AFL 360, respected commentator Gerard Whateley and former Demons captain Garry Lyon broke down the situation.

“The trajectory; you want to be able to see the signs, and Saturday was frankly about as bad as it’s been,” Whateley said.

Lyon added: “It’s hard to argue with any of that, all the commentary. And Alastair Clarkson would be asking himself those questions.

“His great strength is his capacity to work harder than anyone else over the journey. He’s been the hardest worker, he’s been the most innovative coach of the modern era ... when he went through his successful period at Hawthorn, he changed the way football was played, and now he’s into the next chapter of his coaching life, which is probably his last chapter.”

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Lyon raised examples of yesteryears of coaches who’d reigned supreme in their initial eras but weren’t able to achieve success later in their careers as magnet-movers.

“What we’ve got to assess, which is hard, is to try and pass judgement on one of the all-timers,” he said.

“It’s happened before; it’s (Mick) Malthouse, it’s (Dennis) Pagan, it’s these great, great coaches who owned their eras and got premiership success off the back of them, who then went, for different reasons, to different clubs down towards the bottom ... and their capacity to impact there wasn’t what it was, understandably. And that’s where we find this modern-day great (Clarkson).

“He’s a stubborn man, and he’ll dig in ... I would suggest that he has (still got the faith in himself), but he’s got to prove that, and his club’s got to prove that.”

Whateley surfaced two main points of concern for the Kangaroos in their current toiling state.

“There’s sort of two questions that they’re still stuck on. One is method; we are not seeing it, he began.

“I do think they suffer by comparison to Richmond on that front. You should see what they (the Tigers) are building and how they want to play.

“And then they’re going to start getting second-guessed on their recruiting, while careers are blossoming elsewhere ... this is the doom loop. If you don’t get out of it, it repeats on you over and over, and they’re in about the third spin cycle of this.

“And they would have desperately hoped that at the end of 2025, it would have been ‘you can see what’s about to happen’. Now, whether it takes another year or two or three, we’re not going to exit this year with that surety as you can see what’s about to happen.”

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