North Melbourne has been one of the most talked about teams so far this pre-season with expectations high for the upcoming year. But Brad Scott isn’t fazed by the external pressure that comes with all the hype.

“There’s been pressure every single year. Pressure in 2010 when we took over a young group and there was youthful exuberance around the club and a new coach…‘New Era’ was even our slogan so there’s pressure every year,” he told AFL.com.au.

“Every club puts probably more pressure on themselves, every coach and player puts more pressure on themselves than people do externally so no more than usual.”

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After admitting 2013 was a year of ‘wasted opportunity’ following several heartbreaking, narrow losses, the fifth-year coach is as buoyant as ever.

“My overriding feeling was that it was a season of significant improvement. (The) previous year we really struggled with the best teams in the competition and certainly in 2011 we struggled with the top four and last year, we challenged everyone. Now we didn’t quite get the job done in a lot of those games but the simple fact is, if we had have got the job done in all those close games we would have finished third. Now I don’t think anyone in the competition would have predicted us finishing third in 2013 so a lot went well, but clearly (there’s) still a lot of work to do.”

Scott says he’ll be looking to push forward with the club’s exciting style of play.

“We’re still looking to play a real up-tempo style of football because it has been really successful and we’ve really put the best sides in the competition under pressure and we want to continue to do that.

“I think the challenge for us is, is to be able to respond to different game states which we clearly didn’t do last year. But unfortunately you can’t snap your fingers and get that done immediately, you need some experience and our players are a lot more experienced this year and we’ve brought in some experience with (Nick) Dal Santo and (Robin) Nahas as well so I think we’ll be better placed to face those momentum shifts again in 2014.”

While many criticised North’s defence, Scott knows overall, the team’s back half is one of the league’s best. He has though, admitted ‘team defence’ was an area of concern following critical lapses throughout certain parts of games. But no-one will be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

“If you go too far in focussing on defence, you take away what we’re good at. So I think we’ve got to try and retain what’s working for us and fix a few areas which takes time unfortunately but we’ve worked extremely hard in the pre-season to rectify the issues we had last year.”