Drew Petrie has described North Melbourne’s round one performance as “pathetic”.

The Roos were never in the match against Adelaide, falling by 77 points in a disappointing start to the season.

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Petrie said the performance simply wasn’t good enough, with the pressure now on every player to respond against the Lions next week.

“It’s a pathetic way to start off,” he told ABC Grandstand following the loss.

“Going into today we knew that the last couple of years we’d started slowly, so we were certainly aware coming over here that we were going to walk into a side (Adelaide) that had a lot to talk about in their off-season with a new coach and game-style.

"Things were going well and (there was) a big crowd here on Easter Sunday, so we knew what we were walking into.

“We just gave a very, very ordinary account of ourselves.”

Two early goals to Shaun Higgins had North very much in the game early on, but the Crows dominated the remainder of the opening half.

“The first quarter was not too bad, we probably fumbled a bit and didn’t make the most of chances when we went inside 50,” Petrie said.

“We just didn’t defend the middle of the ground enough when the footy was going through from the back half to their front half – we just didn’t give our defenders much of a chance to defend.

“Footy always starts in the middle with the contested situation, and in the first half especially they smashed us.

“All throughout the ground they had more numbers at the contest than us – we were just a bit hesitant and didn’t go in and win the contested footy.”

A five-goal run saw North reduce the lead to 30 points midway through the third term, but it was all too late according to Petrie.

“We left too much to try and break that 12 goal margin down,” he said.

“If you are down by five or six goals you can generally get back to within one or two by three-quarter time, but when you are down by 11 goals it’s a pretty hard task to pull back that sort of margin.

“We showed good signs through that third quarter, but there’s noone in these change-rooms walking away thinking they performed OK today.”

Petrie said the focus will now be firmly on turning the tide next week in front of the Roos’ home crowd.

“Brad (Scott) just spoke about how we respond from here.

“We go back to Melbourne next week against Brisbane at Etihad Stadium. They had a loss as well, so they’ll come out breathing fire too.

“It’s up to everyone to change the course of what happened today. From player 1 to player 44, we are all responsible for making sure that doesn’t happen again.”

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