A fascinating approach from North Melbourne to bring in both Malcolm Blight and Wayne Carey as coaches in 2009 was revealed on the weekend and confirmed by the latter.
With Dean Laidley stepping away from the role, a powerful board member approached the duo with the plan for Blight to take the reins, with Carey to take over as part of a succession plan.
Veteran journalist Damian Barrett revealed the plot on Triple M over the weekend and put the question to Carey.
“Nobody knows about this at all, other than the people that actually spoke on the phone,” Carey said.
“I can say that I received phone calls from Ron Joseph, and spoke to ‘Blighty’ as well about it, and we were going to go play some golf.
“They wanted to me to come back to the club as a coach under ‘Blighty’ and then to take over.”
Malcolm Blight was asked for his version of events on SEN’s Whateley, saying it never really lined up well for him.
“I was asked, ‘would you be interested in some sort of progression plan with Wayne Carey?’,” Blight said.
“It would have been a short term, a bit like Paul Roos and Simon Goodwin did.
“We discussed it and it was ‘probably not’ in the end. It didn’t work out and Brad Scott got the job and did a pretty good job with it too.
“Initially (it interested me), but when you go through the machinations of it all and what I was doing at the time and where I was, I think I was living in Queensland.
“It was one of those things, it didn’t quite sit together for me. It may have for Wayne and it may have for the club, but we didn’t go on with it very much.
“I guess I was involved with a third party and I was 100 per cent behind him, but I wasn’t sure whether this would go the right track for everybody.
“I think North did the right thing and got Brad Scott.
“If truth be known, hopefully I was coaching North Melbourne from when I was the last playing-coach in 1981, that was my dream, to be a forever coach at North Melbourne.
“I’d just missed out on 20 or 30 years. If I’d had my time again I would have preferred to stay at North Melbourne the whole time to be perfectly honest.”
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