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Caitlin Latter has been a North Melbourne supporter “since inside the womb”. Too young for the club’s 1996 premiership, she also missed out on a ticket to see their 1999 flag. She will be there on Sunday as the Kangaroos take the final bound in their mission to end a 24-year drought.
“Just You Wait And See” has become North’s motto for the finals, but when it comes to success for their long-suffering supporter base, there has been plenty of waiting and not enough seeing.
Mega fans Caitlin Latter (left) and Devina Potter with North Melbourne president Sonja Hood.Credit: Jason South
“It would mean everything,” Latter, whose mother was a cheer squad member in the 1970s, said of the prospect of victory. “We haven’t seen much success for a long time at this football club.”
For a club sadly accustomed to lean periods, the 2020s have been as bad as it gets for the Kangaroos, whose men’s team have won just 12 games in four seasons.
But through the dark times, North’s women have provided hope and joy as one of the elite teams in the AFLW. They are the first of the expansion clubs to reach the grand final, and just the sixth overall, stats which highlight the difficulty in playing catch-up.
Though the AFLW is still in its fledgling phase, a premiership would be cherished at Arden Street. The women would join an exclusive club at North, whose four flags since joining the VFL in 1925 came in two successful eras in the 1970s and 90s.
So too would coach Darren Crocker, a member of the Kangaroos’ 1996 premiership team. After the passing of the great Ron Barassi, Denis Pagan is North’s sole surviving premiership coach.
“Crock could be in pretty exalted company there,” North president Dr Sonja Hood said.
“And for these girls, imagine they’re writing history not just as our fifth premiership, but as our first women’s premiership if they win it.
“It’d be incredible for our club to have that as something to celebrate. I think you get wound up after a while the narrative about your club, and it all becomes a bit hopeless. We’re not hopeless.
“We’ve got an incredibly strong women’s team. And we’ve got an incredibly strong foundations in our men’s team, and we’re a really good, strong club. It will mean the world to our people.”
North president Sonja Hood (left) with skipper Emma Kearney and chief executive Jennifer Watt.Credit: Jason South
North’s connection to women’s football began in the early 2010s, before it became mainstream or fashionable, under the watch of former chief executive Eugene Arocca and Sash Herceg, who was working with the Kangas’ community arm the Huddle.
Hood, who was at the time North’s general manager of community engagement, remembers the club fielding calls from Melbourne University’s football program.
Whereas the men’s team would drop a name and say Gill [former AFL chief and University Blues legend Gillon McLachlan] told us to call, Hood recalled, their women’s team, known affectionately as the Muggers, adopted a different approach.
In exchange for training under lights at Arden Street, they offered players to help run Auskick on the weekend, and community programs out of the Huddle.
Emma Kearney and Darren Crocker are shooting for North Melbourne’s fifth premiership.Credit: The Age
“No one had ever rung us and offered to do something for us,” Hood, decked out in the club’s royal blue and a T-shirt emblazoned with “Just You Wait And See”, said. “Everyone rings you as an AFL club and asks you to do stuff for them. And all of a sudden these women were offering a partnership, an actual reciprocity was amazing.”
North’s goodwill paid off years later when they were granted a licence to play in the AFLW. Their prized recruit was a Mugger – Emma Kearney, their inaugural captain and one of the best players in the league. Kearney said at the time her connection through Melbourne University was a key factor in joining.
It’s understandable, then, why people at North roll their eyes when rivals intimate they offer extra incentives, such as free cars, to come and play for them.
“This operation runs about as lean as anything I’ve ever seen,” Hood said. “The giving away cars to get places is not how North operates – never has.
“If they are coming here for free cars, I’d like to line up for one. That’d be sensational.
“I kind of think there are people who might like to go back and rethink things they’d said about players leaving clubs for North Melbourne. We had connections with a lot of the girls from before the AFLW had started, and they were connected to this place.”
While former Muggers Kearney and Ash Riddell are key players on the field, Devina Potter has become a diehard fan. From Sydney, she became “obsessed” with the sport and North Melbourne through her ties with the Muggers.
“It’s been a lot of fun to go to Arden Street and see the girls play, follow them and be completely crazy about them,” Potter said. “It’s exciting to see the progress to what we hope is our first premiership.”
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