THE NORTH Melbourne faithful is restless.
Restless about their club being 0-3, after a successful recruiting raid that netted Jared Polec, Aaron Hall, Jasper Pittard and Dom Tyson.
The Roos performed above external expectations a year ago, but now they're well below them, after a round one hiding to Fremantle and coughing up leads in consecutive weeks to Brisbane and Hawthorn.
HAWKS RUN DOWN ROOS Full match coverage and stats
"Yeah, I'm aware of that," coach Brad Scott tersely responded in regards to his side's record.
"What do you want me to say? You drum it up, mate, but we've just got to hang in there.
"We've got some things we'd like to straighten out, but those things will straighten themselves out if we continue to work really hard on it."
Restless about team selection.
No Paul Ahern, Luke McDonald continues to struggle, the reluctance to give Jy Simpkin a stint in the VFL – he was better on Sunday – and Tom Campbell over Nick Larkey.
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Jed Anderson and Sam Wright returned at state league level on Saturday night and seem obvious contenders to play in the AFL next weekend.
Second-year defender Tom Murphy continues to bang on the door, too.
"There is a lot that goes into selection. Do you want me to put someone's head on a platter for you? I'm not going to do that," Scott said.
"You can keep asking, but I'm not going to do that. Mate, we'll name our team every week and you can read about it."
WATCH Brad Scott's full post-match press conference
Restless about Brad Scott, in his 10th season at the Arden St helm.
He led North to September in four of the five seasons between 2012 and 2016, including back-to-back preliminary finals in 2014 and 2015, but it's been tough going since starting 2016 with nine straight wins.
Scott is right to point out how different the public perception would be if the Roos had gritted out victories in rounds two and three.
But they didn't – and that's what matters.
Scott sees good signs and says everyone would be talking about "a few good things" if those two matches were stopped at half-time.
North Melbourne isn't young or inexperienced, either, with this week's team ranking fifth for career matches and average age.
"We've just got to make sure that we can put everything in place we want to put in place and execute for longer," the coach said.
"The nature of the game is that if you don't win, you're really disappointed – everyone's disappointed – but it's a fine line that people recognise.
"We'll just hang in and keep working really hard and history tells me the teams that do that really well come out all right in the end."
The problem is this season might effectively be over by then.
