North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson has explained the decision to sub out club champion Ben Cunnington, admitting the Kangaroos “needed to try something different”.
Cunnington was subbed out in the third quarter as North Melbourne desperately tried to stem the flow of Carlton’s surge, which ultimately saw the Blues prevail by 23 points in front of nearly 50,000 fans at Marvel Stadium.
The two-time best and fairest winner could be seen in discussion with Clarkson as the senior coach explained the decision to sub out the veteran onballer for fellow contested ball winner Hugh Greenwood – a decision Clarkson explained post-match.
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“The rationale behind it, ‘Cunners’ has been a great player for our footy club and hopefully will continue to be, but he’s a clearance beast and we need him to be getting clearances for our side and he’d had none halfway through the third quarter,” he said,
“He’d be disappointed in that, but we just needed to try something different. Hugh Greenwood came on and he was able to give us a little spark in that area. Cunners just didn’t have a great day.
“We just can’t keep blokes on the field if they’re not playing their role to their capability then we need to make a change and that’s the way we went.
“He took it in the right manner like you’d expect him to. Hopefully he’ll be better for it next week.”
The match turned significantly in the third quarter as the Blues kicked six goals to North Melbourne’s one.
Clarkson said the decision to sub Cunnington was made to try and change the course of the battle in the middle of the ground.
“I spoke to him at the time,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s just, at that point in the game we’re starting to lose control of the game and it’s just like we’ve got a fresh player there, who hasn’t been performing their role to their capabilities and it was the middle of the ground we felt like we’d just fallen down a little bit at that point in time with the supply they were getting.
“We just made the change, sometimes you make it on a whim and just hope for the best. It’s hard when they’re strong, experienced players like that who are so proud and they can turn it around themselves quite often, but we just thought we’d try something different and Hugh helped us a bit.”
