IT WAS all looking so positive for North Melbourne. Only 16 days ago Dean Laidley's team was sitting in fourth position despite a thumping at Skilled Stadium and headed for a double chance in the finals and a better-than-modest profit for season 2008.

Then the cracks began to emerge. The Port Adelaide capitulation followed by the dreadful defeat in front of a largely empty Homebush by the ageing Swans who rallied when North's best men could not is ancient history in terms of the premiership series.

But the recriminations continue and the strong feeling emanating from Arden Street is that more pain is in store for the club and its football department, which was gutted by the Sydney performance.

Jess Sinclair has been forcibly retired and Nathan Thompson could follow this week although he is keen to play on in what is looming as a highly sensitive situation.

The contracted Adam Simpson, who was shattered by his performance in the elimination final, must be questioning his position in the side, not to mention the captaincy and North must be wondering what more it has to do to extract consistent on-field responsibility from Daniel Wells, who played poorly in his last game for 2008.

Laidley and his assistants probably need a few more days to recover from the disappointment before they wield the axe and look at some controversial trades and Laidley himself seems certain to find that he is working with at least one and possibly two new assistant coaches next year.

There is also some sensitivity at board level among the directors James Brayshaw put together to fight for survival in Melbourne. For the second time this season Denis Pagan stated his ambition to coach, which caused some angst early in the year and rendered Pagan relatively useless to the club in terms of football expertise.

For whatever reason — and the fact that Pagan remains a coach in the eyes of some players — the two-time premiership mentor has no role in football and is on board for largely symbolic reasons. Clearly there is underlying tension between the coach and his predecessor and Pagan is unlikely to be there next year.

Brayshaw and his chief executive Eugene Arocca must be filthy at Ron Joseph who appears to have escaped a hefty fine for the simple reason of inability to pay. Joseph, who over the years has made an artform out of bending the rules, admitted he had been "dopey" in backing the Kangaroos last season to the tune of $300 against Geelong.

His defence — that he did not know club directors were banned from punting on football — was flimsy and difficult to swallow. Joseph is a Hall of Famer at North and something of a club legend but at other clubs he would have been forced to resign by now.

North Melbourne's financial situation remains disturbingly dependent on the AFL and what it might offer the club in terms of special assistance when the commission meets next month. Clearly the Kangaroos remain low in the food chain in terms of club corporate sponsorship and even though their shareholders have agreed to hand the power back to the members at a soon-to-be-convened extraordinary general meeting there is no way Brayshaw will manage to deliver on his multi-million dollar "White Knights" pledge.

True, the president has made a good fist of the job but the fact remains those pledges were a significant part of North's survival plan.

It is disappointing to learn the club will again be forced to sell home games to interstate venues. There is little that weakens a club's image more than handing a home-ground advantage to another club.

It will look at Sydney because it is happy to increase its presence in a non-traditional market but there is a sniff of deja vu about the Kangaroos selling a home game to Sydney in a strategy that has failed to reap any significant pay-offs for the club.

The club needs to fill its $1.2 million black hole but the the Brayshaw-Arocca blueprint was based around forging a greater presence in Melbourne and within the club's local community.

Arocca has pushed the Melbourne -Telstra Dome-Arden Street theme and Brayshaw made a point of pledging that if the club was to die it would die fighting to remain a traditional Melbourne-based club. And yet within a year it is selling games again? That will not have much appeal to those members who jumped on for 2008.

You can't imagine that North would be a great asset in Sydney given the poor impression it made with those ill-fated home games that began in 1999 not to mention the manner in which it flew in, took the money and then ran from both Canberra and the Gold Coast.

The Kangaroos appear to be on significantly better terms with the AFL. Laidley, by and large, has had a good year and despite the end-of-season capitulation there is no evidence to suggest the club is rethinking its plans to extend the coach's contract.

But it was a dreadful capitulation, one that has left many at the club shellshocked at how badly certain individuals let the team down. The fact of the worst finals crowd in eight decades cannot solely be attributed to North, but yet again, the Kangaroos have lost a final in front of a pitiful attendance.

All the talk since that game in off-field terms has been of the western Sydney strategy and how daunting a task the AFL faces in winning over Sydney in an meaningful way. The equally daunting task remains North Melbourne's fight to survive.