Wayne Carey has confirmed that he was offered a coaching role at North Melbourne in 2009.
The Kangaroos were going through their options for a new coach before the 2010 season when a powerful board member hatched the plan to sign Malcolm Blight as head coach with Wayne Carey as an assistant.
The plan had Blight to coach for two years when Carey would then step into the head coaching role.
AFL journalist Damian Barrett revealed that he had heard about rumour and asked Carey if the offer truly came to him on Triple M.
“Malcolm Blight was approached and was on the hook to be the coach of North Melbourne,” Barrett said.
“This is the bit that’s explosive, a board member of the club put this to Malcolm Blight at the time, part of this plan had a succession plan with Wayne Carey to take over as coach from Malcolm Blight after two years.
“I have been told it was (board member) Ron Joseph, who went to Malcolm Blight with the offer him the package.”
Carey was surprised that Barrett had heard the rumour as he thought only he, Blight and Joseph knew about the plan
“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.”
While then North Melbourne President James Brayshaw didn't know about the offer, he did concede Joseph was central in the hiring of the coach in that period.
“Ron Joseph was part of the committee formed to appoint the new coach,” Brayshaw said.
“The committee was assembled and ultimately made the decision to hire Brad Scott, which was a very good appointment.”
While Carey confirmed the offer came to him, he said that he was firm that he never really entertained becoming a head coach.
“It’s 100 per cent true, I remember the phone calls,” Carey said.
“But I was firm, and I said absolutely not.”
North Melbourne would go on to make four finals series under Scott between 2010 and 2019.