VFL/AFL legend Leigh Matthews says key North Melbourne figures “lack credibility” to make major footballing decisions.
It was revealed on Tuesday that a war of words has erupted between a prominent Kangaroos coterie supporter and CEO Ben Amarfio via email.
Adrian Kinderis, a Kangaroos benefactor and member of the Shinboners Club, has called for Amarfio and president Sonja Hood to immediately resign.
North Melbourne have won just one game all season to languish at the bottom of the ladder as pressure continues to mount on beleaguered coach David Noble.
“When I look at the North Melbourne hierarchy from chairman down - it looks a bit to me like the blind leading the blind,” Matthews told Sportsday.
“You’ve got the chairman of the board, who’s only been around the board and the footy world a little bit at that level, never at club level in other words, never at an executive level.
“Ben Amarfio, who’s been there for a year or two, but didn’t come out of a football background.
“Who’s got credibility to be making decisions on a way a football club, particularly a football department of a football club, should be run?
“And do you know who is there who’s got that credibility to know how a football department runs? David Noble.
“You take Noble out of the North Melbourne situation, they’ve got no one at the club with credibility.”
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Matthews wonders if North Melbourne should relinquish Noble from his coaching duties and move him into in a football manager position, a role he successfully held at both Adelaide and Brisbane.
“Would it be out of the question that if they decide that they don’t think David Noble is doing the senior coaching role well enough, but you know in his work at the Crows and his work at the Lions, he’s an outstanding football manager,” the four-time premiership coach said.
“Would it be feasible if he popped over, you change his job – ‘David, you take over as football manager’.
“I don’t know whether David would want to do it, I don’t know if North would want to do it.
“This is a really poor team at the moment. You need some people with credibility in the organisation in my view.
“No one in their right mind would be going to coach North Melbourne unless you had a credible football manager that you were confident in, and you might say CEO the same.”
Brownlow Medallist Gerard Healy believes North are “at the lowest ebb of any AFL club probably ever”.
Noble has won just five of 37 games in charge of the Kangaroos.