For Brad Scott, the answer is simple and as far as the club’s members and supporters are concerned - he has this message for you.
“You can expect improvement. We let ourselves down against the best sides in the competition last year and that’s really what we’ve been striving for in the pre-season…to train and get ourselves fit enough and strong enough to compete against the best.
“We’re not concerned about setting goals as to where we might finish, we’re concerned about competing against the top four sides. If we can compete against and beat the top four from last year, the results will take care of themselves.”
With players like Drew Petrie, Jack Ziebell and Liam Anthony fit and ready to return after disappointing years in 2010, the second-year coach has every reason to be enthusiastic.
“We are in a much better position right now than we were this time last year. We genuinely feel that we’ve got 34 or 35 players that can push for a senior spot right now.
“Drew looks as impressive as he did this time last year; he’s just a very good player and he’s training accordingly. We had no doubt that he’d get back to that sort of training form. We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves because as Drew says to me very regularly; ‘you’re only as good as your last game’ and unfortunately his last game was a long time ago.
“He’s just really diligent with his training and he just wants to get back out there and prove that he can still do it, but his training form has certainly been encouraging.”
Petrie’s availability gives Scott the chance to experiment with his forward line structure during the pre-season.
“With Drew being available and Lachie Hansen making the transition from defence to attack…what we have is flexibility and I will never complain about having too many good players to fit into a forward line.”
Others hoping to regularly make it onto the field in front of goal this year include Ben McKinley, Aaron Edwards, Ben Warren, Lindsay Thomas, Matt Campbell, Kieran Harper and Aaron Black.
“We have great competition for spots which is encouraging for any coach. We’re pretty pleased with the players we can play through there, tall and small.”
While fitting Petrie back in is one challenge, covering gaps left by injured key players is another.
“With the pre-existing injuries to Hamish McIntosh and Nathan Grima, we hoped they would settle over the pre-season but they needed surgery and that was really disappointing.”
The loss of McIntosh throws up many scenarios for North’s coaching staff, particularly when you consider the potential implications of the AFL’s new interchange rule.
“We’ve got a variety of options but I think I’m probably like most coaches out there really trying to analyse what ‘might’ happen with the new sub-rule. I haven’t come up with a solution yet…I don’t think anyone has because they wouldn’t have had the chance to practice it.
“At this stage we look at Goldy being a terrific athlete and we know that he can spend the majority of the time in the ruck if needs be.
“We’re not ruling Hamish out for round one either. His progress with his achilles since surgery has been really good so he may well be available for that first game. But if he’s not, we know that Drew can play in the ruck and Lachie is 197 centimetres and he’s pinch-hit in the ruck for us before.
“We certainly won’t discount Majak Daw’s ability to play in the ruck as well. He’s a versatile player, very agile and very quick so it’d be an enormous effort from him to improve enough to be in contention for round one but it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.”
Losing Grima to a back injury is arguably the most significant loss given his ability to play on all types of forwards with his elite endurance and skill.
“He is a key player Narni, so you don’t replace him easily but we were very fortunate to pick up Cam Pedersen in the Rookie Draft and he’s certainly capable of playing key position…he’s six foot four and 100 kilos so he can play physically on those players and he’s got very good closing speed so we’re fortunate to have him in the wings.
“Robbie Tarrant is having a really promising pre-season so far and we hope he can hold down a key position whether it be in the forward half or the back half. And then of course we’ve got Thompson, Firrito and those versatile players who can play the key position or be the fourth tall as well so again, I think our forward half and back half are very flexible.”
