Sorry but HE WOULD HAVE MADE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL! The guy is a rat and our club was left like every other club that Northey coached....in the poo! Northey left Sydney and melbourne in a hole and he did the same to us. He squeezed the life out of the present squad and that was it.
He was another example (and with all respect to the girls in here) of a soft-$o$k....just listening to that stupid little scrag by his side. If he wanted to stay, he should have stayed. He was talking to Brisbane from June and used them as a way to get more money so frankly he can stick it.
His style was good but it was never going to carry us. You could see against the top sides it wasnt good enough, we got smacked by Geelong (more than once), Carlton took us to the cleaners in the last quarter and well we died on the ass in the second half of the year. We couldnt compete with them.....
And whats worse? Walls comes in and tries to put some structure in and talks FOOTBALL to the players and they are too dumb to understand what he was saying because it wasnt kick long and crash. He was never going to work because he was too smart for our fools (how is he going to teach Howat and neeld to play smart footy?) and the players were backlashing against the Northey decision.
Ill say one thing...in the second half of 96 we were hands down the best side in the comp. Once we got going, we were unstoppable. But the first half was too poohe and we missed out because of it. Once everyone got over everything it was too late only for rubbish politics to come out in the pre-season to screw us in 97.
Northey didnt jump, he was pushed. Dont know where you got that about talking to Brisbane from June. He spoke to Brisbane after the papers published that Mal Brown, on authority from Leon Daphne, spoke to Kevin Sheedy.
He made the most out of a poor list. Any coach like Walls can win a premiership with the list he had at Carlton. A good coach makes a poor list competitive, and we were the most competitive team in 95 since we lost our last GF in 82. The draw against the bombers that year was one of the toughest displays of footy I've seen at our club in 20 years.
Northey knew he was short on talent, which is why he chased Lockett for 2 years to agree to join us. That hardly sounds like a guy preparing to jump to Brisbane.
He is the one coach we've had in 20 years that looked like he could get the RFC to play competitive footy. And he is the one coach that brought back the fans and mothballs out of the closet, and some excitment back at the club. And the club rewarded him by approaching to Sheedy.