THE PRESS conference at North Melbourne on Tuesday was called to announce the club's naming-rights sponsor for its Arden Street headquarters.

But the attending media pack soon turned it to the club's board election on Wednesday night and the recent stinging criticism of North chairman James Brayshaw in the morning broadsheet.

No sooner had Brayshaw and Aegis Services Australia chief executive Denice Pitt unfurled a banner entitled 'Aegis Park' on the surface of Arden Street Oval and confirmed the international consulting company's sponsorship of the club, talk turned to the board election.

Throughout the 15-minute press conference, an unfussed Brayshaw emphasised - time and time again - the achievements of his board and administration over the past three years.

He listed them: the change in the club's ownership structure that delivered it back from private owners to its members; the increase in club revenue from $20 million to $26 million; the record levels of membership and sponsorship; three consecutive years of profit for the first time in the club's history; the $15 million Arden Street facility that had been "a dream for 23 years"; and the $3 million football department budget over the past three years.

"I think the club is situated as well as it's ever been, certainly since my time of knowing," Brayshaw said.

"When we took over the club was flat-lining. It was an insolvency firm's visit away from not existing.

"So three years later to be sitting in this unbelievable facility, now having a great partner and having what I think is a wonderful future is a credit to everyone concerned."

In some ways, Brayshaw sounded like a politician at the end of an election campaign, summoning every last bit of his physical and mental energy into securing his re-election.

Or, in this case, his re-election and that of two other sitting board members - his brother Mark and Trevor O'Hoy - over challengers Peter de Rauch and David Wheaton. 

Brayshaw was asked whether the announcement of the Aegis sponsorship on the eve of the election was a coincidence. He said it was, saying the deal had been about a year in the making and close to finalisation for several weeks.

The president was also at pains to defer the credit for the club's achievements in the past three years to his administration, even saying at one stage that he, personally, could take no credit for them.

All the while Brayshaw must have known he would soon be asked about Caroline Wilson's column in Tuesday's The Age. 

Under the stinging headline, "Messy James: Brayshaw must work harder or get out", Wilson wrote Brayshaw was viewed as "inconsequential" by North's key corporate supporters, club heavyweights, some AFL commissioners, and Victorian and Tasmanian government leaders, while he had bungled potential deals for North to play games in Hobart and Ballarat.

But if Brayshaw was offended by Wilson's comments, he wasn’t saying.

"When you are a public figure and you do this job, getting whacked by people is par for the course," he said.

"It's happened ever since I've started doing it and I don't mind people having a go at me personally.

"To borrow one of Sam (Newman)'s phrases, the queue finishes in Darwin for people who want to climb into me. That's fair enough, I don’t have any issue with that."

He was convincing.

However, he was not prepared to turn the other cheek from any criticism that may, by implication, have been directed at North staff.

"What I do take exception to is people having a go at our staff who, working at a club this size, do an unbelievably good job and don't deserve some of the rubbish that has been served up over the past 48 hours," he said.

"The performance of this management team over the past three years … is something I'm very proud of."
 
"(CEO) Eugene (Arocca) and his staff… just do a great job every day. They turn up, roll their sleeves up and they achieve amazing things."

"So when I read this club's achievements being belittled, I get really disappointed."

Asked if he would do anything differently in the lead-up to the election if he had his time again, Brayshaw took the opportunity to respond to criticism by former club chairman Lloyd Holyoak about the board's 2009 decision to add Jimmy Krakouer and Brent Harvey to the North Team of the Century selected in 2001.

"If the worst thing this board's done is add two legends to our Team of the Century then I think we’re in a reasonable space," he said.

Asked about Wilson's criticism that he missed an opportunity to win Liberal leader Ted Baillieu's support for the proposed $40 million stadium at North Ballarat, and North's place in it, Brayshaw said it was ill-founded.

He said the then Labor government had canvassed the project with North at the "last minute" in the state election campaign and had told the club "if the offer was leaked in any way it was off the table".

In those circumstances, the club was in no position to curry the favour of the Liberal Party ahead of the election, he said.

He also took the opportunity to reiterate that playing low-drawing AFL games in Ballarat remained a good idea, and the club would continue to work on convincing the Premier and the Government of that.

"I think if you asked everyone in this room involved with football whether a boutique stadium capable of housing 10 games a year out of a wonderful regional centre an hour out of Melbourne is a good idea, most sane people would say, 'Yes, it is',"he said.

Brayshaw was then asked about another of his recent critics, former North Melbourne board member and current board challenger de Rauch.

De Rauch has run his election campaign, among other things, on a platform of helping to generate off-field revenue streams for the club, which he claimed the current board had failed to do.

Brayshaw's response to de Rauch’s candidacy was blunt.

"My question to Peter de Rauch is: he's been a director of this club for 15 years, so any of this stuff he says he's going to do, why hasn't he already done it?

"When I took over as chairman of this club it was on its knees, it was finished. You only need to go and ask (AFL CEO) Andrew Demetriou. The club was gone.

"We’ve worked for three years with this amazing team, to get the club back to where it is today.

"I would say to Peter … after 15 years on the board you've done your bit, let us see if we can deliver what we said we’d deliver."

When asked about his performance as chairman - it was a fair question given he had continually deferred credit to his administration - Brayshaw emphasised he had delivered all bar one of his six 2007 election promises, the white knights' scheme.

"I ask you, if any president three years ago stood up in front of 3000 people and guaranteed six things and five of them happen, how do you reckon he’s gone?"

While saying he had no idea which way the election would go, Brayshaw looked and sounded like a man who still has the passion and commitment to get stuck into what he acknowledged remains the huge task of securing North Melbourne's future. 

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL