Veteran AFL reporter Caroline Wilson says people close to Rhyce Shaw believe North Melbourne did not do enough to support him while he was senior coach.
Shaw will meet the team he coached for just 29 games this weekend when the Kangaroos travel up north to take on the Gold Coast Suns, where he is now a full-time development coach.
MORE: Kangaroos star's emotional tribute to Shaw
After his resignation from the Kangaroos job last October, Shaw stunned North officials when he joined Gold Coast as the Head of Development on January 4 ahead of the 2021 season.
Amid reports suggesting that Shaw had iced out senior Kangaroos staffers, such as GM of Football Brady Rawlings and director Glenn Archer, since his exit, Wilson set the record straight on the Shaw-North break-up.
"It has brought up a very, very unhappy chapter in North Melbourne's history," she told Nine's Footy Classified.
"I have no doubt, talking to people close to Rhyce Shaw, North Melbourne say they did enough, I'm not sure they did do enough and put the right people around him.
"I'm not sure they listened to all the recommendations. They certainly didn't do their due diligence on the man they employed as senior coach.
"They were certainly very poorly administered in the way they chose Rhyce Shaw as coach."
Wilson's claim echoes that of Shaw's brother, Heath, who told the Herald Sun that his brother had not been supported.
"Rhyce didn't get the support he needed," he said.
"It wasn't handled as well as we would have liked but in the end, we got the result we wanted."
It is believed that last year's hub amplified Shaw's struggles and accelerated his exit as senior coach. Wilson took aim at the Kangaroos for allowing him to make key decisions on which assistants were able to enter the hub.
"I've had this argument with Ben Amarfio, the CEO, and I'm just amazed with a rookie footy boss and a rookie coach, he didn't elect to go to the hub, even if the AFL had pressured him at the time not to," he said.
"Glenn Archer is saying to everyone that (Shaw) wanted this and he wanted that; he was a rookie coach, he shouldn't have been allowed to make those decisions."
Former Fremantle and St Kilda coach Ross Lyon was left staggered by the fact that Shaw had elected not to take his line coaches up to the hub, laying the blame at the feet of Rawlings, who was in his first season as the football boss.
"He didn't deliver in his role," Lyon told Footy Classified.
"Sometimes support looks like saying, 'You can't do this'. He took up development coaches and not his line coaches to the hub.
"As a former coach, I just can't comprehend that. Someone should have said, 'I know you're close to them, you want their comfort, but your line coaches are going'.
"They would have been supportive."
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