North Melbourne – 19.9. (123)
Melbourne – 8.13. (61)

North Melbourne gave Melbourne a workout at Etihad Stadium. Melbourne were ineffective at delivering the ball inside 50 and were out-marked inside 50 as well. This combined by the Demon’s poor kicking meant that they went no where near the Roos after quarter time. The game did have some comedy though, Gibson kicked in the wrong direction and then a few minutes latter had a shot on goal where a North player showed him the direction the goals were and Nathan Jones showed him the other. Jake Spencer, whom at the best of times is mildly co-ordinated, had a shot on goal and midway through his run-in the ball slipped out of his hands and was forced to play on and kicked it out of bounds.

Big Moment

There weren’t any really noticeably big moments in the game just a gradual swing in momentum towards the Kangaroos.

Key Players for North Melbourne

Todd Goldstein – 5 goals and 25 hitouts is a good game for a ruckman. Possible best on ground but his garbage time goals might take the honours away from him.

Michael Firrito – Stood up when it mattered. 7 marks and 24 disposals was good.

Key Players for Melbourne

Shane Valenti – 21 touches, 9 tackles and 5 marks was great around the ball.

Nathan Jones – Played mostly on half forward for 2 goals, with some selfless assits, 26 possessions and 8 grabs.

Musings from the Match

• Attendance was appalling as expected, how do North stay alive with rugby-like attendance figures and Stadium deals raping the club’s coffers?
• North Melbourne used the ball much better than the Dees
• Why do the Demons try to slow the game down when they are down by 40 points, is it just for practice at doing it?
• Why do Melbourne kick backwards when they are so far behind and it never works?
• Etihad Stadium sells chicko rolls and large chips. Not a fan of chicko rolls, but large chips is good to share, or to be a pig with. Can we have the sauce dispensers working though please. I hate those little sachets that you have to tear open and then like 2ml of sauce comes out, it’s almost not worth the effort and you never get the right amount of the packets either so you run out or you waste some. End rant.
• Ridiculous amount of free kicks were given off the ball at the beginning of the match, I assume it was because of the Memo that has been going around about roughing up players.
• Melbourne were threatening in the first quarter and would have given tanking advocates a bit of a worry because Melbourne had already had deployed some weird postionings.
• Paul Johnson played down back, in place of Jarred Rivers. In fact Melbourne played three ‘ruckmen‘ in Jake Spencer, Paul Johnson and Stephan Martin.
• Nathan Jones’ move up forward was very successful, I would have rather seen Davey playing forward again and Jones on the ball though.
• Jame McDonald was a big let down for Melbourne supporters today, he played loose in the backline to little avail and did not chase down a North player running back in to the goal square, where the ball was going. That was too lazy for me to see and not note.

SuperCoach

Todd Goldstein’s goals helped him towards 119 SuperCoach points. Sam Power and Drew Petrie had a lot of the ball late to push their totals up. Cale Morton was also an offender of garbage time stats with 92 SuperCoach points. Bate was impressive on the lead and amassed over 100 SuperCoach points along with Melbourne’s key players Valenti and Jones.