NORTH Melbourne’s upset win over Hawthorn on Saturday may have been a surprise to many, but not coach Dean Laidley.

Not that Laidley knew his side was going to win, but he maintained he simply knew he would get a far superior effort from his players a week after they surrendered to Fremantle to fall out of the top eight.

“I thought our effort today was terrific, from our senior guys through to our younger guys, but I knew they’d play well today after last week,” Laidley said.

“I said to them after the last game that it was probably the worst performance we’ve had, certainly since I’ve been coach, in regard to our softness. I just thought we were out and out soft and today we competed aggressively.”

The Kangaroos’ desire to run in support of each other through the Hawks’ rolling defensive zone and then attack the ball carrier going the other way was a feature of the win.

Laidley pointed to the round three clash between the sides as evidence of his players’ ability to maintain such an energy-sapping style over four quarters and said that 16-point loss had been an important learning experience for both him and the team.

“This game is a pretty simple game,” he said.

“You can throw it around any way you like, but if you win the contest and you tackle hard, nine times out of 10 you’re going to win the game.

“Some weeks you might get beaten by talent and probably last time we played them we were in a similar position at three-quarter time and a little bit of luck went their way and perhaps they had better talent than us on the day.

“But when you attack the ball and the opposition like that there’s not too many games where you’re going to be out of it.”

Nathan Thompson finished the day with the relatively modest figures of one goal and 10 possessions, but was important to the overall structure of the Roos’ forward line just nine days after undergoing a knee arthroscopy.

Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett expressed his concern at the speedy return prior to the match which clearly didn’t sit well with Laidley who maintained the big forward had “ticked all the boxes” in his audacious bid to play.

“He should probably mind his own business I think,” Laidley replied when asked about Kennett’s remarks.

“You can’t make those comments and I don’t know exactly what it was, but I think it was something along the lines of ‘he shouldn’t have been playing eight or nine days after an operation’.

“Well just worry about what your club’s doing; we’ll be right.”

The meek effort over in Perth coupled with a lengthy injury list meant the Roos had been given little chance by those outside the club going into the match, but Laidley felt that was just par for the course for his club.

“Do you think that changed because we dropped out of the top eight this week?” he replied when asked if the gloomy forecasts had been a motivating factor.

“Go back and have a look at everyone’s selections at the start of the year and see how many people picked us in the eight. It’s probably what they thought anyway, but we live by that. Our supporters, I think, who have watched us this year and all our 34,000 members would take great delight in how we’re playing.

“We probably haven’t had the consistent results that we’d like, [but] they’d be wonderfully impressed with the kids that we’re playing.”