THE AFL club that began the week as the Kangaroos finished it by declaring its intention to return to its original name — North Melbourne.

You had to wonder how that went down inside the AFL. Not only had the club rejected the AFL's offer of a place in the future as it envisaged it, new chairman James Brayshaw, after being egged on by a couple of speakers at Thursday night's revival meeting, had given an undertaking to go back to the club's old name. It's a parochial one. But then it was once a fiercely parochial game.

Meanwhile, on the Gold Coast, a new market awaits and rival codes are jostling to get in.

Who was the most potent figure in this debate? For me, Glenn Archer. His stand on the future of the club was only what was expected of him. Archer was a player you could believe in, the old-fashioned sort who gave everything for the club.

He also happens to be one of the major characters in the recent history of the game, up there with players such as Buckley and Voss. Archer expressed something deep and fundamental about Australian football that was no less relevant when his career ended on preliminary final day 2007 than it was when he started 16 years earlier.

Different people would use different words to describe him, such as tough or fearless. You could also say whole-hearted.

He was interviewed on Thursday night before the meeting.

On the subject of taking his club to the Gold Coast, he said: "This is playing with people's lives. I know that sounds extreme but I know a lot of these people." He said football was their life and you knew the sort of people he meant. North grannies who'd grown up near Arden Street and converted their grandkids to the blue-and-white cause. North's full of people like that.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Brent "Boomer" Harvey, one of this season's pre-count Brownlow favourites. Boomer lives to play football.

"If it wasn't here (North)," he told me, "it would be somewhere else." I gathered somewhere else meant not only other clubs but also other competitions. But — after a pause while he collected his thoughts — he also said: "I've never had the privilege of being inside another league club, but I reckon ours is the best club."

He was being matter-of-fact. That is, the club ritually presented in the media as a basket case is, in his view, the best in the competition. Two funerals in the past year had touched him deeply. One was an old North trainer, Jack "Skull" Castle. The other was Judy Francis, the woman who cooked the meals for the players after training. I spent a week at the club a year or so after the scandal that saw Wayne Carey leave the club.

Anthony Stevens and Archer, the two other major players in the drama, weren't talking to reporters. I spent a few days with Judy in the kitchen. She decided I was OK. Stevens and Archer spoke to me. That's how it worked at North.

Some will say that to approach the subject of the North Melbourne Football Club in this way is to be sentimental or romantic.

I say remove the sentiment and romance from the game and you'll end up with a group of people running around chasing a ball and no one watching. Football is not a matter of market theory. It's a weird conglomerate of history, passion and belief that, obviously, has to collectively pay its way.

On Thursday, in the wake of the Kangaroos' decision not to relocate, Brisbane Lions chief executive Michael Bowers called on the AFL to review the Kangaroos' special-assistance funding.

Leaving aside the issue of the special assistance Brisbane has received over the years, is Bowers suggesting North should be put in a position that could see it driven from the game? The first aim of the game's administrators surely is an economy that supports 16 clubs, each with a history and a personality that make it a character in the big show that is the AFL.

In the words of Collingwood president Eddie McGuire: "The fabric of football is so fragile, you don't want to start pulling threads away." He supports both North Melbourne and the AFL's push into the Gold Coast, hence his proposal to have Collingwood play there.

McGuire says he doesn't care if clubs are "on the (financial) drip" from the AFL, provided they contribute to the game.

As he points out, if the game was ruled purely by market forces, Melbourne and Hawthorn would not exist in their own right, the Bulldogs probably wouldn't exist at all and Geelong wouldn't be playing in Geelong.

Asked if he thinks the existing clubs will support a 17th licence for the Gold Coast, McGuire replied, "I don't think anyone knows. There's just not enough information." He also said Collingwood would assist North to find match-day sponsors for Collingwood v North games.

Footy's about belief. You can't win without belief and North had one all of its very own. Yesterday, this quote was posted on a blog site from the Australiasian newspaper of June 15, 1940: "In two aspects North Melbourne stands second to none. One is loyalty of its supporters. The other is the determination to carry on, despite its disadvantages. In the face of adversity, which might well have broken the spirit of most men, we find that from the earliest days there were always enthusiasts to fight for North Melbourne."

Ron Barassi told me there were people on the committee of North who mortgaged their houses to finance the club's first premiership in 1975.

The Kangaroos' history on the field over the past 30 years is one of proud success, but, financially, they have battled. The most sobering moment on Thursday night came when the man from the financial consultancy commissioned to examine the club, said: "A lot of things have to go right for us to get the numbers (dollars) we need."

He told the crowd the task confronting the club was not impossible but it was going to be extremely difficult.

The AFL, select members of the press and Andrew Demetriou drew adverse criticism on the night but certain things must be said in their defence. The first is that the AFL has a responsibility, as Demetriou said on Thursday, to grow the code. If you support the AFL's foray into South Africa, as I do, how can you not support its foray into the Gold Coast?

Gold Coast Mayor Ron Clarke, brother of former Essendon champion Jack Clarke as well as being the man who lit the Olympic torch at the Melbourne Olympics, described the decision of the Kangaroos board to reject the AFL's offer as "an insult" to the people of the Gold Coast. This says something about the attitude of the local populace. They're the fastest growing area in Australia. They're the future.

North Melbourne, as they see it, is the past. But it's also why virtually nothing of North's distinctive culture beyond its colours and kangaroo emblem would survive the move north.

The man in the bright spotlight now is Brayshaw. As various people have pointed out, he stands to be remembered as either the man who saved the club or the one shunned its last best hope. The problems facing him are obvious. However, McGuire has shown what an incomparable asset it can be for an AFL club to have a president with a major media profile.

As co-host of The Footy Show, Brayshaw now brings a degree of exposure to the club that will go beyond Trevor Marmalade's occasional quips from the bar.

While he is in front of the camera, so is his club. North now has an assured media presence and is part of the football story in a much bigger way. It also has the potential to be a popular cause.

In the end, whether North survives will depend in part on its own efforts and also on football politics. Leaving the meeting I spoke to a member, Neil Clothier, who has followed North since 1970. I asked him if he was happy.

"I'm happy that we're getting a chance," he said. "If we die, we die here in Melbourne."