{"id":895108,"date":"2026-09-17T08:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895108\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:36:14","slug":"afl-news-2026-adam-simpson-pulls-out-of-north-melbourne-kangaroos-head-coaching-job-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/895108\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL news 2026: Adam Simpson pulls out of North Melbourne Kangaroos\u2019 head coaching job race"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Melbourne<\/a> great Adam Simpson<\/a> has ruled himself out for the vacant Kangaroos head coaching job.<\/p>\n

Simpson, who coached West Coast<\/a> to a premiership in 2018, had preliminary talks with North Melbourne footy boss Todd Viney and chief executive Jennifer Watt.<\/p>\n

\"Simpson\"<\/p>\n

Adam Simpson during his time as West Coast coach.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

But the 50-year-old revealed on SEN on Thursday that he wouldn\u2019t be chasing the role vacated by sacked legendary coach Alastair Clarkson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to take it any further,\u201d Simpson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a good chat with Todd and Jen the other day, which was reported which is fine, and just upon reflection it\u2019s probably not going to work for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI let them know yesterday and I\u2019ll let them continue on with their journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether they get an old or new [coach], that\u2019s totally up to North Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simpson played 306 games for North, winning premierships in 1996 and 1999.<\/p>\n

He also won the club\u2019s best and fairest award in 2002 and captained the Kangaroos from 2004-2008.<\/p>\n

He admitted the thought of taking charge at his former club was attractive.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you\u2019re in, you\u2019re all in,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the hesitancy of it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo go through where the club is, my history with the club, knowing some people there, having that thought, \u2018Geez, this would be cool\u2019, and starting the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I realised in the end it probably didn\u2019t suit me as well as I thought it did, and then the decision was made, [and I] didn\u2019t have to go all in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Adam Simpson during his Roos days.\u00a0The Age<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on the precipice and that doesn\u2019t mean you get the job or anything, but once you\u2019re in, you\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I worked through that as best I could with the family and with my manager, so then we got to the decision to pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simpson was West Coast\u2019s coach from 2014 until midway through 2024, when he was sacked<\/a> amid a horror stretch of results.<\/p>\n

He coached the Eagles to their fourth premiership in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Melbourne great Adam Simpson has ruled himself out for the vacant Kangaroos head coaching job. Simpson, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-895108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}