Milestone to forget for Shaw
LESS than two weeks after being appointed North Melbourne coach on a full-time basis, Rhyce Shaw has been saddled with a sobering statistic.
The Kangaroos’ sorry tally of 1.8 (14) against Geelong in a 55-point loss on Saturday night was the lowest in the club’s 95-year VFL/AFL history.
Shaw won’t shy away from it.
But he has no intention of dwelling on it either as he looks to the future.
“It just happened to be one of those nights,” he said.
“I’m more worried about the way we played more than anything, than the score.
“We need to be able to defend a bit better.
“Our midfield needs to lift in a few areas and we need to try and score as best we can.”
Rather than lay the blame on his misfiring attack, Shaw said the root of the problem was the way ladder leader Geelong dominated the contested ball.
“We got beaten pretty convincingly in there,” he said.
“Geelong gave us a real lesson inside. It’s as simple as that.
“We were disappointed in our output.
“We felt in the first quarter we were in there with a sniff. We played some pretty good footy, we had 15 inside-50s, but we just couldn’t score.
“That was something we needed to change and it just didn’t quite work for us after that. We kept changing things but we were chasing our tail a little bit.”
North Melbourne’s only goal came when ruckman Todd Goldstein converted after winning a free kick early in the second quarter.
Forward Mason Wood had the chance to kick a goal in the dying minutes, which would have at least let the Kangaroos avoid the ignominy of their lowest score.
He butchered the shot, spraying it out of bounds on the full.
North Melbourne’s previous lowest score of 2.7 (19) was in 1930, also against Geelong.