1998 Premiership Season

Well I had prepared a match report for this weeks round but I have lost the disk so I am going to have to start again. Firstly I would like to say Twilight football at the MCG is a stupid idea, The sun sets in the West right behind the Ponsford (Western) Stand. That means that for the entire game you cant see properly if you sit in the Southern stand as your looking directly into the setting sun. It all makes the standard of play drop as players drop easy marks because they cant see the ball

Anyway to the game, North got the worse possible news when Matthew Capuano was a late withdrawal from the side. He was replaced by Anthony Mellington but it created a huge problem for North in the ruck, third gamer Evan Hewitt now had to handle the ruck duties on his own again Jim Stynes and Jeff White, probably the best ruck combination in the league

Melbourne got out to a great start, they totally dominated the opening period of the game, they had four goals on the board before North even looked like getting a goal, John Blakey finally put one though but it was a long time coming and Melbourne had bolted. North�s forward line was non existent, Scott Welsh was the main target while Carey tried to stop Melbourne�s run in the backline.

North was being killed in the middle, Stevens, Rock and Bell hardly touched the ball in the first quarter, only Shannon Grant managed to put in a serviceable performance picking up 6 possessions. Even Hewitt was battling against Melbourne�s ruckman and Jeff Farmer was being his usual annoying self on the forward line.

More of the same in the second term, North threatened to come back at one staging kicking two consecutive goals for the first time but Melbourne soon powered away again to set up a huge seeming match winning lead at half time.

North suddenly came to life in the third term, Carey was dominate back at Centre half forward, Abraham was dangerous around the packs and the midfield started to lift the work rate. North even managed to stop the ruck dominance of Melbourne but using high leaping Mellington to help out Hewitt around the ground. North kicked 7 goals in the third term and looked as if they had changed the whole game around, at three quarter time they had got back to within 20 points. North were lucky on the bell as Travis Johnson just missed being paid a mark right in front on the siren.

North was on a roll and I thought it wouldn�t take long to overhaul the fading Demons. Melbourne had the first chance of the term but wasted it and then once again it was all Kangaroos. Carey kicked another, Sholl was leading into space and when Shannon Grant stormed out of the middle to kick a goal North was only 1 point behind. A win seemed certain. Something went wrong however, whether it was North relaxing, thinking like me that the hard work was over and an easy win was there for the taking or if the hard month of football had taken its toll but North just stopped. After having all the momentum a turnover by Pickett resulted in a Neitz goal and Melbourne managed to turn it all around, Melbourne�s running players ran in and kicked four of the last five goals to come out 25 point winners. It was a disappointing end after such a great comeback. North now travel to Adelaide to take on the power.