NORTH Melbourne may have broken through for its first win of the season on Saturday, but coach Brad Scott will leave Etihad Stadium knowing he still has a lot of work to do to turn his team into a contender.

The Roos impressed on their way to a 60-point win over a hapless Port Adelaide side, but Scott still saw plenty of facets of the team's performance that will be exposed by top-four quality teams.

The coach has remained true to his long-term vision for success - even as the losses mounted and his side sank to the bottom of the ladder - and that position didn't change after the pressure-relieving win.  

"We got the result today, but I'm still really conscious that we've got some things that we really need to keep improving on," Scott said.

"The last few weeks I've been fixing some areas that have been really letting us down and I think we went some way to improving that today. Not all the way, but some way.

"If we can fix those area then I'm confident that we can get to a level where we can compete against those [top four] sides.

"We're still a fair way off that. We haven't proven we can do that yet."

The match was marred by a crowd incident that saw a North supporter make contact with Port's Daniel Motlop as he celebrated a goal in the third quarter.

Scott expressed his disappointment over the clash but did not see it.

However, it was a rare lowlight as Todd Goldstein and Brent Harvey led the way in the Kangaroos' best performance of the season to date. The pair had plenty of support with the side boasting 12 goal kickers in the 18.25 (133) to 10.13 (73) result.

The win keeps the club's finals chances alive, but Scott isn't interested in scraping into the eight.
 
"I wouldn't even consider finals because they're so far off in the distant future that they're largely irrelevant in my thinking," he said.

"My thinking has always been around improving individual players and getting them to a standard where they can compete against the best and improving us as a team so that our system will stand up against any side.

"Until we can do that … it won't help us if we can sneak into the finals and we still can't compete against those sides.

"We've got to focus on the little things that are going to make us a good side and when we get those things right then I'm sure the finals appearances will start to happen."

Scott praised the Roos' defensive pressure, that yielded a lopsided tackle count of 60 to 37, which he said was a large part of the team's success against Port.

From an outsider's perspective the win would appear a shot in the arm for morale at a club that attracted plenty of criticism during a tough start to the season, but Scott said no such injection of self-esteem was required.

"It's difficult to measure these things but from where I sat morale was always pretty good," he said.

"We've got a really proud playing group and sure they've been very disappointed with performances, but I couldn't question their intent and their morale at training.

"Our focus has been very much on fixing some things that needed fixing and we were confident if we could fix those things that we would start to see some better results."

Scott will coach against his twin brother Chris for the first time when the Kangaroos take on Geelong at Skilled Stadium next Saturday.

While he understands the interest, the Roos' coach is just looking forward to pitting his team against a high-quality opponent ahead of any sibling rivalry issues.