There is only one side in the top nine that North Melbourne can beat and that is Richmond.
Richmond is a fierce first to the ball team, well-drilled and very talented. The players are at the small end of the scale. KPPs, rucks and mids are at the light/short end of the scale and larger, talented smalls like Deledio, Houli and Grigg are not muscle players. Riewoldt, Grimes, Hunt, Batchelor and even Titch give away mass and physical strength in most of their contests. Maric can't get air and gives away mass and height every week. Ty has improved but he's just not physical.
As we've seen our boys overcome this usually and we win. But not against North.
North derive great clearances from their dominant ruck, defend with intelligence and discipline, and counter like a Port Adelaide. They destroyed us in Tassie on the counter. Massacre. Took em ten minutes.
They form up for the dirty dirty 2-2-B, heat our clearances and mop up across half back or, even worse for us, triple team the hotspot. (It's pretty sexy if you barrack for North.) Or they hustle inside the clearance zone and raffle our errant handball.
Our turnovers are initially brought about by actual pressure but eventually players in space imagine pressure and bomb to three North players in the hotspot. Faaaaark!!!
Logically we just turn it back on them. We hunt them, eh? Yeah well that hasn't worked as well as it should because our puny tackles don't stick. Have another look at the first half of last week and ask yourself a thousand times 'Was that supposed to be a tackle?' Their strength advantage, *smile* it.
Hardwick knows what we have to do. (We nearly got it right in Tassie but for ten minutes.) We have to play them with cold spite. They don't like it. We've done it to better sides than North. We have to target and sting individuals.
Goldstein for starters. Ziebell. Swallow. Petrie. Waite. Tarrant. Jacobs, Higgins, Nahas, Bastinac. Hunt em. Our tackles have to hurt and stick.
Cold spite. Let's *smile* this puppy.
