Supporting North Melbourne is a bit like living at the foot of Mt Etna, or somewhere along the San Andreas fault. You just know trouble is never far away.

That, when you turn your back, you just know a glowing torrent of lava will start pouring in your back door, or your house will begin to quiver like Mick Nolan's stomach when the tectonic plates start to shift underneath.

North fans understand this. It has always been thus.

And, just when you begin to approach a new AFL season with something approaching optimism, bang, along comes a haymaker that makes you realize why you - as a Kangas' fan - have only ever associated optimism with the brutal reality check that invariably follows.

Having assembled a really promising young squad that most footy followers - outside of North fans and Dream Team ferals - would not immediately recognise, Northerners were nudging each other on the sly over summer and muttering out the corner of their mouths: ‘might be a chance for the eight this season'. (They were assuming, of course, Drew Petrie didn't break his foot three times again, and we didn't get beaten by St Kilda by 104 points again in round two.)

And then what happens? The Age today publishes a story about the club being so impoverished it is on the brink of financial ruin. That its bank balance at one stage last year showed the grand total of $3.40, or some equally risible figure.

Well, who among the royal blue-and-white would be surprised by that news? We've been waiting all pre-season for the boiling lava to arrive, and here it finally is.

The club issued a media release late this afternoon addressing each of the points made in the article, agreeing with one or two but generally rebutting most of them, and with some conviction, too.

Still, North fans won't be overly concerned. They've lived through this sort of cataclysmic news every year for, oh, about the past three decades. Yes, we know our finances are crap, but are they any more crap than usual? No? OK, let's carry on usual, and make sure to bring that oily rag with you.

For reasons that are partly historical (a late, 1925 entrant to the VFL), partly geographical (the suburb of North Melbourne is about as big as, oh, maybe six doonas put together), partly administrative (see The Age today), and partly the result of AFL negligence (constant rubbish fixturing and free-to-air TV scheduling), North Melbourne has always lived on the precipice.

Even when it churned out champion teams and premierships, the joy was tempered about AGM time when a close reading of the accounts revealed the club could afford two dozen oranges and an esky full of Gatorade for round one of the following season, and that was about it.

'Cash-strapped' became the adjective that preceded just about every reference to North Melbourne, so that newcomers to the code might have been forgiven for thinking the club's name was the CS Kangaroos FC.

Yes, the AFL does step in and help with its equalisation policies and competitive balance fund. This effectively means the league gives the North Melbournes of the world money with one hand, while taking away any chance they have of becoming financially independent with the other.

Take the 2011 AFL fixture, for example. I mean, what a doozy.

North starts its season by playing the wooden spooners, West Coast, at Subiaco Oval in a twilight game on Sunday. If ever a game had Fox Sports written all over it, it was this one.

The Kangas then travel outside Victoria six times, more than any other Melbourne-based team. The club that pioneered Friday night football has been given one Friday game under lights for the year - yippee - precious few matches on free-to-air TV, and 11 games against the 2010 finalists, including two against each of the Grand Finalists.

(And then there's the deal the Kangas struck to play home games at Etihad Stadium, which is such a schemozzle that they need to get their entire membership to turn up just to break even. But that's another issue.)

Meanwhile, Collingwood (to pick another club purely at random), get to play 18 matches at the MCG, all of them in prime time, only have to travel interstate twice - first-class on a chartered Emirates flight, of course - don't have to wear at any stage a clash jumper (because Eddie says so) and have on their payroll 22 assistant coaches, one for each player.

But, here's the thing. Because North Melbourne, Melbourne, Port Adelaide and one or two other clubs around the place rely so heavily on the AFL for handouts, they are really in no position to complain when things don't fall their way.

The AFL, you see, has both a long memory and thin skin. It doesn't take criticism well. In fact, some clubs - such as Hawthorn and Richmond, who've spoken out against the league in the past 18 months - reckon (privately) they are a vindictive bunch of politburo b******s.

That's why, when the 2011 fixture was spat out by the AFL computer late last year, North's football chief Donald McDonald said he was absolutely delighted with the Roos' schedule. In fact, he couldn't remember being happier.

"Our interstate travel is well spaced out through the year, we only have four six-day breaks between games and won't travel for the last month of the season, so we are more than comfortable with the fixture," McDonald said, while apparently chewing on a swarm of wasps at the same time.

There is a great irony in the fact that just as the Kangaroos are about to field an exciting young team featuring the likes of Garlett, Grima, Greenwood and Goldstein, along with Wells, Wright and Warren, and many more no-names besides, they seem to be in absolute chaos off the field.

There have been boardroom battles, a public slating of the job being done by chairman James Brayshaw and now these revelations about the club's balance sheet.

It's been the life of a North Melbourne supporter for too long now. And it's got to stop. This hand-to-mouth, Oliver Twist existence has no place in a modern, professional sporting competition that likes to talk about world's-best practice. It's torture for everyone, certainly the long-suffering supporters, but most of all - I imagine - for Brad Scott and his players.

Brayshaw and his re-elected board should be emboldened by their mandate - and the details in that grim Age report - to get off their collective arses and work like they never have to find a solution to the club's endless poverty cycle. And they need to do that in concert with the league who should forget about spending money on expanding into China and California, and instead make a priority of this issue which is fouling its own backyard.