Shinboner number: 590
Guernsey numbers: 17, 26, 45
Born: September 24, 1947
North Melbourne games: 120 (1974-82)
Goals: 5
Coach (1993-2002)
North Melbourne Hall of Fame inductee: 2009
Elevated to Legend status: 2026

Denis Pagan had just 21 days to prepare for the 1993 season when he took over as North Melbourne coach. Pagan was at Skinner Reserve in Braybrook when North chief executive Greg Miller phoned with the news he had won the Roos’ coaching position.

Pagan was due to coach Essendon’s reserves in a practice match against Footscray that Saturday morning, but after Miller’s call he did not know what to do. “It was a dilemma. I reckon I was the only person in the AFL at the time who held two jobs with two different clubs,” Pagan said.

He decided to coach Essendon as normal, but by half-time that had become impossible. By then news of his appointment at North had broken, and reporters and cameramen were buzzing around Skinner Reserve, desperate for a few words from the new Kangaroos coach.

Soon afterwards Essendon senior coach Kevin Sheedy ambled up to Pagan and, tongue firmly in cheek, asked him: “Okay, Pagan, what have you been up to?”

After completing his final duties with the Bombers, the new North coach had less than 24 hours to prepare for a practice match against Geelong at Tatura in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley region.

Pagan knew Roos players such as Wayne Schwass, Wayne Carey, Anthony Stevens, Anthony Rock, Glenn Archer, Mick Martyn, Corey McKernan, Darren Crocker and Craig Sholl extremely well, having coached them during his decade-long stint as North’s under-19s coach.

Pagan’s under-19s record was outstanding. From 1982-91, he led North’s “Joeys” to nine consecutive Grand Finals — failing to reach the premiership decider only in his first season — and five flags.

After the under-19s competition was disbanded at the end of 1991, he moved to Essendon, where he coached the Bombers’ reserves to the 1992 premiership.

His return to Arden Street had come 10 days after the Kangaroos suffered a 147-point loss to Adelaide in a pre-season game at Adelaide’s AAMI Stadium. The loss had rocked the club. Up until then North had been eyeing 1993 with great optimism, confident it could return to the finals for the first time since 1987.

But to perform so poorly so close to the start of the season suggested something was majorly wrong, and North’s coach of the previous three seasons, Wayne Schimmelbusch, soon reached a “mutual agreement” with the club that it was “time for a change”.

Three days later, Pagan, who had played 120 games for the Roos from 1967-74, was given the task of restoring the Roos players’ battered confidence in time for their Round 1 clash against the Brisbane Bears in just three weeks.

Having finally earned his AFL opportunity at the relatively advanced age of 45, Pagan saw no reason to depart from the fundamentals that had served him so well at the lower levels. In his pre-game address at Tatura, Pagan had three simple instructions for his players.

“I said, ‘Today, fellas, we’re going to play on from marks and frees in the midfield at every opportunity, we’re going to kick the ball long and deep through the corridor, and every time it goes in there I want front and square crumbing,” Pagan recalled.

North went into half-time against Geelong eight goals down, but when Cats coach Malcolm Blight took star spearhead Gary Ablett snr off at half-time, the Kangaroos finally clicked, storming home to almost pinch the game.

In hindsight, Pagan believes this match was the catalyst for North’s glorious 1990s era. “The whole North board was there at that game and they were that excited. We went and had a few drinks in the Tatura Football Club afterwards and from that moment on, probably until 2000, the whole club was united,” Pagan said. “Everyone was on the same page. The players were genuinely excited and everything we introduced they really bought in on. I think it just went from there.”

North carried its second-half momentum from Tatura into its final two practice games—beating Footscray at Bendigo’s Queen Elizabeth Oval and Collingwood at Arden Street—and then into the home and away season.

After defeating the Bears by 23 points at the MCG in the opener, the Kangaroos compiled a 9-2 record that put them two games clear on top of the ladder after Round 12.

North faded to finish the home and away season in third and was eliminated in the first week of the finals, losing to reigning premier West Coast by 51 points at Waverley Park.

Pagan’s first season, however, would prove the launching pad for an incredible run, in which North made seven consecutive finals series (1994-2000), three Grand Finals (1996, 1998, 1999) and won two premierships (1996 and 1999).

Pagan had a talented list at his disposal, and utilised that talent to the maximum. Captain Carey was the 1990s’ most dominant forward, and was well supported in attack by John Longmire and, later, McKernan. Midfielders Stevens, Schwass, Rock and, later, Peter Bell, Adam Simpson and Shannon Grant also gave North a powerful engine room, while Archer, Martyn, David King, Byron Pickett and Dean Laidley were the key planks of a formidable backline.

But Greg Miller, North's football manager from 1985-94 and chief executive from 1995-2001, said Pagan provided the structures—on and off the field—that extracted the very best from North's group. “Denis came in straight away with this great game plan, discipline and this ability to picture the whole game—he had a brilliant mind,” Miller said. “From there, the success followed.”

During Pagan's 10-year reign at Arden St., his game plan hardly deviated from the one he introduced before the Tatura practice match. Pagan demanded “collision football” at stoppages and, as “a great devotee” of four-time Richmond premiership coach Tom Hafey's maxims—long kicking through the corridor and quick delivery to his forwards.

Just as Hafey had his era's best centre half-forward, Royce Hart, to direct most of the Tigers' attacks through, Pagan had Carey. However, Carey played deeper than Hart, usually stationing himself about 25 metres from goal in a position somewhere between centre half-forward and full-forward. The theory, developed by Pagan in consultation with Carey, was that the spearhead would be more damaging closer to goal than he would be playing as a traditional centre half-forward.

Pagan added other tweaks to the Hafey blueprint, the most distinctive a tactic where the Roos' forwards pushed up the ground to clear their forward 50 so they could isolate Carey and his direct opponent. It worked best when the star forward led his opponent up the ground, then doubled back towards North's vacant forward-line to mark running with the flight of the ball. The strategy became known as 'Pagan's Paddock', but Pagan debunks the common belief it was devised around Carey, saying he first used it in the under-19s.

“It worked just as well without Wayne. I can remember using Leigh Tudor in that role in the under-19s, kicking it over the back so he could run on to it with his great speed,” Pagan said.

The strength of Pagan's game plan was its simplicity: “I figured perfection through simplicity was the best way to go,” he later explained, but some argued it was too predictable and made it easier for opposition teams to counter Carey.

But the proof is in the premiership pudding and Pagan's two flags are compelling evidence of a game plan with all the right ingredients.

As a man manager, Pagan was an authoritarian. Stevens and King both described him as a “hard taskmaster”, while Schwass simply said he was “very, very hard”. Recalled Stevens: “Denis would always say, 'I'm not here to be your friend, I'm here to be respected'.”

Schwass experienced Pagan's wrath after North's 1997 preliminary final loss to St Kilda. Vice-captain at the time, Schwass, along with Archer, had missed the final through suspension. Seeing Pagan approaching as they stood at the top of the players' race, Archer skedaddled, sensing an oncoming spray. Schwass chose to stand his ground and, as Archer suspected, attracted Pagan's fury, the coach telling him bluntly:

“You f***** cost us.”

Schwass was not happy and by the time he left the MCG that night he had decided to leave North. However, the two-time Kangaroos best and fairest winner now acknowledges he deserved Pagan's tirade.

“It was one of the best sprays I've ever had, but in fairness he was right,” Schwass says. “Your vice-captain suspended, Archer suspended, we lose a 'prelim' final to St Kilda. It was a missed opportunity and it was not good enough from one of your leaders.”

Pagan concedes he might have been “a bit too honest” with players on occasions, even “a bit brutal” at times in the under-19s. But he maintains his uncompromising nature was his “greatest strength” as a coach. Stevens agrees: “He drove everyone to be the best that they could be. He made a lot of players probably better than they were ever going to be because he drove them that way,” Stevens said.

“A lot of our success was on the back of Denis. He created a winning culture that spread throughout the club in the '90s.”

As driven as Pagan was, he also knew when to release the pressure valve with a joke. Stevens says he was—and remains—“a very, very funny man”.

Pagan became renowned for his sayings, which in time would be dubbed Paganisms. Some of the best were:

• Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

• Don't tell me about the labour pains, just show me the baby.

• You can't go down to Puckle St and buy yourself a bag of confidence.

Pagan's success at North was achieved despite the club's then constant struggle to make ends meet, a struggle that meant the Kangaroos trained in 'third-world' facilities, played 'home' games in Sydney (from 1999-2002) and Canberra (from 2002-06) and almost merged with Fitzroy in their 1996 premiership year.

Rather than complaining, Pagan used North's lack of resources to build an “us against the world mentality”, according to David King. “Everything at the club looked poor, but Denis would always say, 'Hey, this is all about our people. Don't worry about what we're doing. Our weights are the same as what they're lifting at Carlton',” King said.

Stevens said Pagan understood and appreciated North's culture better than anyone, and was singlehandedly responsible for introducing the club's revered Shinboner spirit to a new generation after it had faded from football world's consciousness.

Pagan's “great romance” with North Melbourne began in 1966 when he started in the under-19s before playing the last six games of the season in the reserves.

It was a tough initiation. At training, he rubbed shoulders with hard men like Noel Teasdale and Alan Carr and received an early warning from senior coach Alan Killigrew after attempting a drop kick—“You little bastard, do that again and I'll break your back,” the notoriously fiery Killigrew had barked.

A no-frills, hard-nosed back pocket — Pagan described himself as a “very ordinary conveyance” — he played 120 games for the Kangaroos from 1967-74, including their 1974 Grand Final loss to Richmond, representing Victoria in 1971.

Pagan moved to South Melbourne in 1975, playing a further 23 games over the next two seasons. After retiring from the VFL, he played in the VFA, briefly with Port Melbourne and then as captain-coach of Yarraville in 1979-80.

In 1981, North general manager Ron Joseph invited Pagan back to Arden Street as an assistant to under-19s coach John Ibrahim.

The following season, at Ibrahim's behest, Pagan took over as the club's under-age coach, and a celebrated career was born.

Pagan's final year at North, 2002, started with one of the saddest episodes in the club's history, with Carey forced to depart on the eve of the season after it emerged he had been having an affair with Stevens' then-wife Kelli.

Under Pagan, the Roos somehow regrouped to return to the finals — North missed the top eight for the only time during the coach's 10-year reign in 2001 — but shortly after their elimination final loss to Melbourne Pagan joined Carlton on a three-year deal after contract talks with North broke down.

After winning 62.5 per cent of his games as North coach, Pagan had a far tougher time at Carlton, which, shortly after his appointment, was punished for salary cap breaches with severe draft penalties that would ravage its playing list for years.

In nearly five seasons at Princes Park, Pagan enjoyed just 25 wins from 104 games, a winning rate of 24 per cent. Or as Pagan more colourfully puts it: “After 20 years where everything we touched turned to gold, at Carlton it turned to horse manure.”

Pagan remembers his time at Arden Street far more fondly, but is not completely satisfied. He still rues North's after-the-siren loss to Geelong in 1994's second preliminary final, while the pain of the yips-afflicted 1998 Grand Final loss to Adelaide will never completely fade.

“I would like to have one more premiership because I think we were good enough to achieve that,” Pagan said. “But you get what you deserve in footy and we got what we deserved.”

Pagan might not have got everything he wanted on the field, but he got the one thing he wanted from his players — respect. And he got it in spades.

North held a 20-year reunion for the 1996 premiership team in July 2016, when the highlight for Stevens was the obvious respect his former teammates had for Pagan.

Schwass is a good example. “The things he taught me influence everything I do today with regard to my professional and corporate career,” Schwass says. “The transition from footy to another career can be challenging, but discipline, dedication, hard work and not cutting corners, all of those are traits Denis tried to teach me. At the time, you think he's being a bit harsh, but he's been a great influence on me.”

Pagan holds the esteemed position of coach in North Melbourne's Team of the Century. He was inducted into the club's Hall of Fame in 2009 and elevated to Legend status in 2026.