Round 3, 2020: in which we kicked ourselves until our feet stopped working and we fell over.

You might not read about it in many contemporary circles, but the success of a football team can in its simplest form be directly compared to the success of Christian missionaries in the 17th century: It’s about creating opportunities to convert and then converting. And as much as we’d love all of yesterday’s heathens to …

You’ve just discovered Aussie Rules. North Melbourne is the club for you.

In one of many twerks of the 2020 bum, Aussie Rules has discovered it’s one of the few sports in the world with a run of fresh, unabated air time in the northern hemisphere. NB.: This piece is largely focusing on the mens’ team. But we have a womens’ team too. And they are every …

Round 2, 2020: in which we looked down our noses at Giants

Public service announcement: We just beat Greater Western Sydney in Sydney. And by the time this is published the  Giants will have already filed a priority pick request to their private email address at the AFL. Let them. Today is about us. Holy hell, I love watching this club play. Our pressure around the contest …

Round 3, 2019 – in which for 20 minutes we dared to dream.

If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody hears it fall, does it make a sound? If my gas bill is overdue but I don’t open the envelope, do I have to pay it? If Ben Brown brings the ball to the front of a pack in a marking contest, but we have no …

Round 2, 2019 – in which I avoided the outside world so as to watch the replay without prior knowledge, which I immediately regretted.

Tolkien once wrote: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Tolkien could just have easily written: In a hole in the ground there lived a North Melbourne supporter. Yes. The season is two rounds old and we’ve already dived headlong into our respective safe spaces – perhaps resembling more a second day …

Round 1, 2019 – in which the wheels weren’t even attached but fell off anyway.

So the match finished around 8.45pm Eastern seaboard time on Sunday evening. Accounting for a sip or two of diet coke, a pie, maybe a quick dart behind the grandstand and the taxi ride back to the hotel (that seems to be the level of professionalism we’re at, judging recent displays), by my calculations the …

Round 22, 2018: in which we went to the city of churches and our prayers were not answered.

We haven’t won in Adelaide since some time in the Great Depression, or so it feels. These are not the sort of records that we need bother about until we actually do win there again, so let us not shame ourselves by any ignorance on that part. But on Sunday we gathered and channeled what …

Round 21, 2018: in which we experience 30 minutes of carnage not seen since the Battle of Towton.

The next time my friends or family query why I choose to stand at the back of level 1 rather than with them in the hoi polloi of level 3, I will in future refer them directly to Round 21, 2018. Without the ability to turn my back and walk away from the traumatic events …

Round 20, 2018: in which we sweat away eight tenths of our body weight but somehow maintain a pulse.

And lo! the boy-cub cast his spear to one side, the one they call Turner smote two of his foes beneath the dirt, the final siren was sounded from on high and verily the Shinboners collapsed unto the beer garden floor like so many dying stars. Comrades, let me say this: unless you've read this …

Round 19, 2018: in which we went south to begin the climb back north.

Firstly: Ahem. Sorry, just had to get that out of the system. But why wouldn't you dance? Baby, that was a domination. Or, in the words of the great warrior-philosopher and Frankston-bred bon vivant, Dermott Brereton, "an assault". And an assault that took place not in the conditions that have typified our previous jaunts to …