Each of North Melbourne’s five premiership triumphs were shaped by key decisions.

From recruiting sprees to coaching masterstrokes, these are the moments that helped deliver the club’s greatest successes.

1975 - Aylett's recruiting spree

When Allen Aylett took over as president ahead of the 1971 season, North Melbourne was the only VFL club yet to win a premiership. 

Determined to right the wrong, Aylett set out on an ambitious and aggressive five-year timeframe for the Roos to break their duck. 

Central to the plan was luring the two-time premiership coach Ron Barassi from Carlton.

Aylett’s next masterstroke was exploiting the short-lived 10-year rule – allowing players who had served for 10 years or more at one club to move without a clearance. 

His recruiting drive netted star veterans Barry Davis (Essendon), Doug Wade (Geelong) and John Rantall (South Melbourne).

With Barassi, Davis, Wade and Rantall primed, along with the influx of youngsters such as Wayne Schimmelbusch and John Burns and acquisition of interstate stars like Malcolm Blight, the Roos were building.

They had won the 1972 wooden spoon, but Barassi lifted them to sixth in his first season, second in 1974 and, finally, to the ultimate prize in 1975. 

1977 – Risks, risks and more risks 

At three-quarter time in the club’s fourth consecutive Grand Final, North Melbourne was on the canvas.

The Kangaroos had led by 17 points at the first change, but in the second and third quarters their scoring had evaporated. They scrounged just 11 behinds while the Pies found their mojo, kicking 8.7.

Ricky Barham’s goal on the run just before thee-quarter time stretched Collingwood’s lead to 27 points. 

It looked over, but North’s legendary coach Ron Barassi was no stranger to Grand Final comebacks, having orchestrated Carlton's successful fight back from 44 points down at half-time in 1970.

He swung Kangaroos defenders David Dench and Darryl Sutton to centre half-forward and full forward and urged his players to take risks, risks and more risks.

Barassi's moves worked wonders. 

Sutton's early mark and goal in the final quarter’s opening minutes didn’t just break the drought – it opened the floodgates. 

Phil ‘Snake’ Baker kicked another within a minute, then Dench kicked two.

A scorching run down the wing by Wayne Schimmelbusch and subsequent goal from Baker levelled the scores. 

Both sides ran themselves ragged in the game’s final stretch, and as the siren sounded the scores were locked, 9.22 (76) to 10.16 (76).

Barassi's masterstrokes had rescued a draw from certain defeat, and the next weekend the Roos would romp to victory in the Grand Final replay.

1996 - Pagan takes over

Weeks away from the opening round in 1993, the Kangaroos suffered a 147-point annihilation in a pre-season game against Adelaide at the Crows’ AAMI Stadium.

The result rocked the club, and sealed coach Wayne Schimmelbusch’s fate.

Scrambling for a replacement, North Melbourne turned to Denis Pagan.

A former Kangaroos player, Pagan had coached the club’s Under-19s team for a decade.

While leading that Joeys team to nine consecutive Grand Finals and five premierships, he had taught young players such as Anthony Stevens, Glenn Archer, Wayne Carey, Wayne Schwass. Mick Martyn, Anthony Rock, Corey McKernan, Darren Crocker and Craig Sholl.

Appointed 21 days before a Round 1 match against the Brisbane Bears in 1993, Pagan knew the calibre of players he was signing up to coach.

By Round 12 in his first season at the helm, Pagan had led the Roos to the top of the ladder, with a 9-2 record.

Eliminated in the first week of the finals after finishing third, they finished third again in 1994 then sixth in 1995.

Pagan worried that a premiership might never come, but ahead of the 1996 season he received advice from North chairman Ron Casey: “Don’t worry about it, coach. Just keep getting in the top four, our time will come.”

“They were just words of wisdom to a coach,” Pagan would recall after the Roos deservedly captured that year’s flag.

1999 – Carey becomes King

Days after taking over as coach in 1993, Pagan named a brash 21-year-old centre half-forward as captain. 

Under Pagan, Wayne Carey would go on to become the club’s longest-serving skipper, and one of the game’s greatest players.

Around the club, he was nicknamed ‘Duck’, for his slightly waddling walk. Many called him ‘King’. 

With his courage, strength, athleticism and ability to turn flying marks into an artform, Carey reigned over the competition. He was the dominant key forward of his era and one of the best VFL/AFL players of all time.

No one loved a big game or moment more than him. 

"If it was a pressure-cooker situation, I wanted to be right in among the action … I wanted to have the ball in my hands," Carey said in 2006.

His talent and ability to turn a match made him the centre of Pagan's gameplan.

Pagan’s tactic was to clear out the Roos’ forward 50 to isolate Carey and his direct opponent, before kicking the ball to him long and quickly.

The ploy became known as ‘Pagan's Paddock’. It was devastatingly effective, contributing to many of Carey’s 671 goals in his 244 games for the club.

In the 1999 Grand Final against Carlton, Carey underlined the versatility that made him central to North Melbourne’s great 1990s era. 

He was well-held on the day by Carlton’s Stephen Silvagni, but a mini-surge by the Blues soon after half-time prompted Pagan to send Carey into the middle.

The King helped the Roos regain control of the midfield battle with some timely touches, sparking a run of five unanswered North goals that secured the club’s second premiership of a golden era.

2024 – A star arrives

Before entering the AFLW in 2019 as one of the competition’s first ‘expansion’ teams, North Melbourne set out to land some big names.

The Kangaroos recruited the star Emma Kearney from the Western Bulldogs, her fellow premiership player Jenna Bruton, and a 23-year-old forward from Collingwood, Jasmine Garner.

"Jasmine is one of the brightest young talents in the AFLW," North Melbourne’s AFLW list manager Rhys Harwood said at the time.

That young talent quickly developed into became one of the League's most outstanding players.

As a powerful forward, Garner was a headache for opposition defenders. When Harwood suggested moving her into midfield, she became a waking nightmare for opponents and coaches.

She won All Australian honours in her first season at North. A year later, as the Roos made their first finals series in 2020, she won the AFLW players’ vote for the best player in the competition. 

Garner starred week-in, week-out as the Kangaroos reached the preliminary finals in 2022 and the grand final in 2023, losing to Brisbane after leading at three-quarter time.

Somehow overlooked for the League's highest individual honour, the AFLW Best and Fairest award, she earned a long-deserved individual accolade when the Roos made amends in 2024 by demolishing the Lions in the grand final. She was unstoppable in that match, surprising no one at the game by winning the Best on Ground medal.

>> A LEGACY EVERLASTING Help celebrate our centenary in the VFL/AFL