NORTH Melbourne coach Dean Laidley has hinted that Shannon Grant is no certainty to be an automatic inclusion in tomorrow night's team to play Collingwood.

Grant was suspended from last week's team by North Melbourne’s leadership group for breaking the players' code of conduct.

Grant needs seven more games to reach the 300 mark, and with the Roos fighting for a finals spot, and just seven matches remaining in the home-and-away season, the 31-year-old is in danger of not reaching the mark this year.

Laidley said it was his decision and he'd made his mind up, although he wasn't giving much away at Thursday's media conference.

"Sometimes you can't get the lotto results before the lotto draw – the team comes out at five o'clock, and the whole world will know then," he said.

The coach said it was going to be hard to prise one of the younger players out of the side after last weekend's terrific win over Port Power.

"It's pretty hard to tell one of the younger players, I suppose, to tap them on the shoulder and say 'you're out, even though you performed pretty well last week', to bring in a player like Shannon Grant.

"So that's something I've had to wrestle with probably the whole week."

Laidley said the code of conduct had served its purpose well.

"Look, it was disappointing that the incident happened, but those things do happen.

"We have a very good players' code of conduct, and that came into play straight away, so there was no real decision by either myself, or the football manager, or the CEO, or the president to say Shannon's in or out, it's there in black-and-white.

"That's why we put it there – so when these things happen, the players know that this is the process and that's what's going to happen."