IT'S NOT quite 12 months since North Melbourne played Carlton – round 21 last year, to be exact.
On that day, the top-four bound Kangaroos smashed the bottom-four destined Blues by 82 points, with Aaron Edwards and Drew Petrie kicking four each, Eddie Sansbury three, and Lance Whitnall slotting three for Carlton.
This season, the Roos are again chasing a top-four spot, currently being held out by the Swans on percentage – admittedly a significant 16 per cent – while Carlton are likely to just miss the eight after a vastly improved year.
While it's a quirk of the draw that sees two teams meet for the first time of the year in round 20, coach Dean Laidley says what panned out last time they played is utterly irrelevant.
"I wouldn't imagine any records or past games would have anything to do with them, they're a completely different side to anything that we've come up against with any previous Carlton sides," he said.
"They've got as different coach, a different coaching panel, they play a hell of a lot differently, so I wouldn't have thought past history will have much to do with Sunday afternoon."
Laidley admitted that playing a side for the first time so late in the season was a little odd, but said it didn't alter his team's preparation.
"It's a bit strange, yeah. It's a bit strange and it happened to us last year, I think we played Collingwood in round one and didn't play them again for the rest of the year, and played Port Adelaide in round two and then played them in a preliminary final,” he said.
"That's the vagaries of the draw, I suppose.
"We spend the same amount of time on them and give them (the players) the same amount of information about the opposition, because at the end of the day, it's still about what we do, and how we go about it and how we attack the ball."
