But how could Pagan have taught an old dog, or in our case a few old dogs, new tricks?

Campo, Whitnall, Kouta, Ratts, Manton etc etc were already too far into their careers for a bloke like Pagan to come in and change their mindset.

Had he seen this problem coming, he might have traded/delisted the lot of them and worked on moulding the youngsters.

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Writer for SuperCoach Paige www.scpaige.com.au
Twitter - @johnfeeney24

I remember being at the 1989 u/19 grand final replay between North and Richmond out at Waverly. North, who were coached by DP, were red hot favorites and got done. I remember Pagan giving it to the North boys in a big way at each of the breaks. He's always been tough but he's always been fair.
Some players will be MENTALLY STRONG enough to take criticism on board and work to improve and some won't. I've got no doubt he's currently testing the "fibre" of our current list. Dennis Pagan is no fool and he knows what it takes to win GF's.

yeah if we had a Wayne Brittain,Danny Frawley,Chris Connolly,Peter Scwab type coach i would be much more worried about our predicament.

But with Pagan at the helm and a bit of reading between the lines i can see the plan and am comfortable with where we are heading.

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

LMAO! Where are we heading?

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"We used to sit around and talk about how bad the game plan was." Anthony Koutoufides

The list was not overhauled in 2003, a set of mid range players to fill the 23 - 27 age group was recruited to plug a hole, there was no other choice given the restrictions that we had in place.

Year 0 started from the National Draft of 2004. You want instant gratification Abaddon, talk to Mrs. Palmer.

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"Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks"?

Winston Churchill

Where are we heading ?!?

To the national draft with picks 1 and 2
To the Pre season draft and trade period with a wad of cash

and to the future with no more overpaid hacks or lengthy ludicrous contracts holding the sword over the clubs head.

We are heading in the right direction !!

Collo deserves some credit too.

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

i think we will be going in the right direction come 2006 up until now there have been restrictions inside the club to add to the on field problems.

hmmm heard a rather interesting comment from someone who knows somein inside the club ... his comment was that 50% of the problems centered around Collo his opionion was that the Collo is of the old school has always given the football department the least priority in resources and i guess some things he has done said is good ie with regards to saying players wont get the same deal as in the past
But the comments of this guy that i hadnt heard before was that the football department ... off field i think he was suggesting was poorly resourced he has spoken to Sticks and Sticks was aware of the problems but unable to do much he also suggested O'sullavan who was a strong recruiter has been put into a marketing or something and Col Kinear whos been there for 40 years is organising overseas travel ... so maybe there something majorly wrong in the football department wasnt to complimentry with the person who runs the off field football department some young guy who has little football experince or something but i dont know who he was.

But the other comment he made was the Football department has been fairly well held up so i think some changes in the list over last year where held back but i am hoping that this year DP or the football department take control and have more input and say... if they wanted to make more changes but where held back i hope Collo is looking at this season and realises he has to let the Football department make some hard changes for the best interest of this club and let them do it this way....

It makes sense we saw big changes in 2003 and we all expected a similar continuation in 2004 but there wasnt much in changes maybe DP wanted to make ahard discisions on some of the senior players but was told not to ... but i think this year that will hopefully change.

So all i hope is that we turn a lot round 2006 i copped alot of shit today from people at work .... and i am saving all of it up when we can give back what we have been taking over the last 3 years.......

Who is etc Tyrants?
Rawlings is a 24 year old tagger and he won their B&F.

How's Grima, McIntosh, Perry, Perkins, Shore, Trotter, Urch and Watson going?
The kids!
Since Laidley has been there they have traded their picks or used them to draft 21 year olds.
Thewlis, Thompson, Schwarze, Sansbury, Picioane, McKernan, LeCras, Chad Jones, Gibson.
How many of them have done anything?

All mature age recruits chosen instead of kids.
North are going OK because the 28+ year olds are holding the fort.
Apart from Hale, who has come on.
Harris and Petrie are running on the spot.

Its the established players that Pagan developed or drafted that are carrying North along.
The older players.

They can have Brady Rawlings and Laidley.
I'll have Pagan and Jordan Russell.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

interesting read wolfe , i think the fact that Collo is raising his profile in Carlton related matters of late suggest all is geared towards some big post season action.

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*(grow - fun - gah)

Yeah but whatabout your whataboutism.

It does'nt matter how tight fisted Collo is, we have to spend the overwhelming percentage of the cap.
Collo just wants to give it to those who deserve it.

As for Kinnear and O'Sullivan, they were the 2 best moves the club has made.
Your contact isnt Glenn Manton is it Wolfe?

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

BV's correct with his comments.....it will be very interesting to see how North go considering that Simpson/Grant/Archer/Colbert are heading into the latter stages of their careers.

yer was only the person opinion that he felt that there was some very good football brains not really doing much in the club that should be doing alot more but i think mentioned 3 of them lol


Also thats the second comment that i have heard that DP has his hands tied last year after his initial weilding of the axe and most of it was speculation from media and i guess supporters that DP wanted to stabilise the list a bit but maybe he wanted to cut more but was told to hold off maybe some big names where the target in 2004 and he was told wait another year .... hmm interesting stuff but then again i think a lot of these comments come out when the team is travelling badly but maybe there is also some truth to why the club is struggling this year ... who knows we will find out 2006 / end of 2005

Well if sticks hasnt been able to exert influence that maybe he wants to i would think that is a loss and i think the comments are more directed to the off field Footy department not the on field from what i have been told ... but yes i also said that i think Collo has done good things in curbing some of the over paid junkets of the previous admin

That fails to acknowledge that during his time at those respsective clubs they had some of the best resourced recruiting departments in the comp. Most of the premiership players for the roos were either players that were from this era, or players recycled from other clubs. Perhaps you should look at pagan's record of drafting/developing at north in the very late 90's-2002 when the draft wasnt compromised by zone selections and the like.

I'm sure l have stated this in a previous post - Collo needs to bring the do$h out and pump it into the footy department. If we don't have the fund$ then knock on the AFL's door and ask for some out of the equalisation (?) fund. We need a hand and the $930k they slinged us for can be put to good use.

Spot on! Did you see that woeful attempt by Kouta at a punch against Ackland in the first qtr in their forward line? Almost as good as some of the Campo Oscar attempts.

Yes it seems they have fought the good fight but can do so no longer.

OK, lets look at who North drafted during Pagans time.

Harvey, Simpson, Hale, Corey Jones, Pratt, Petrie, Harris, Motlop, Makepeace, Watt, Rawlings, Harding, Kingsley plus trades for Grant, Rocca, Colbert, Porter, Sinclair.
Carey and Longmire were traded, not zoned.

Thats 16 who were or would be in Norths best 22 this week.
Which football departments would have a better drafting ratio than that?

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

I heard the commentators (Stan Alves and Jarrod Malloy) say he looked disinterested, but missed the replay. Is the pressure of losing getting to him? Or can he no longer make the grade?

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"Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost

Not sure what is going on with Kouta.

The thing that stood out for me was in the last quarter of the West Coast game when a bloke half his size (Chad Fletcher) easily outbodied him in a marking contest.

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Why all the knock on Pagans coaching record? He had no resorces at North and did a fantastic job. Proven at all levels he has coached. U19s, Reserves and AFL. The guy is a champion coach. Lets wait until the end of the year and see what moves the club makes. Would like to see a lot more spent on the football department and at least 1 new assistant coach brought in at least. Rehn as had been suggested for a start.