AS HE prepares for his 17th season in the blue and white, North Melbourne veteran Brent Harvey says another season without featuring in September would be a failure.

Harvey, the club's games-record holder, says the Roos were desperate to play finals in 2012 after just missing out the previous two years.

"Every club is going to say they are flying at the minute ... we're no exception. We are training very, very hard like every other year," Harvey told kangaroos.com.au at the club's Christmas celebrations at Aegis Park on Saturday.

"We just missed out on the finals last year, and again the year before. We don't want to be a team that finishes ninth and 10th, we train to play finals football so we'd like to think that we're a big chance. For me anything less is a bit of a failure."

Harvey singled out small forward Lindsay Thomas as the standout on the track since the club resumed training in October.

"You look at someone like Lindsay that's been in the system for a while, his times that he's running is way beyond what we would have thought. Just going to Utah and getting that base fitness, he's come back and he's had a great pre-season," Harvey said.

The 33-year-old was again quizzed on the Kangaroos' captaincy situation, and re-iterated that any decision surrounding his leadership will come down to what's in the best interests of North Melbourne.

Harvey will sit down with coach Brad Scott in January, but is adamant he'll be taking a club-first approach.

"We've just got to figure out what's best for our football club moving forward. When I say that, not just for next year, I'm talking 2013, '14, '15," Harvey said.

"We'll work it out together. Brad's got the final say obviously, but there's a whole lot more factors that come into it.

"If it's going to be good for me to be here when there's another captain coming through and I can help him out, whatever's best for the football club is what we're going to do."

Questioned on who would be the ideal candidate for the role if he was to stand down, Harvey says it would be hard to split a number of strong leaders.

"Drew Petrie's the vice-captain at the moment so he could easily step in. Andrew Swallow springs to mind, Jack Ziebell, Nathan Grima, Scott Thompson - we're pretty lucky, we've got six or seven guys who could come in and do the job straight away, so there's certainly no concerns in that area," he said.

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