Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Marcus Bontempelli all loomed as match-winners at different times on Saturday afternoon, as the respective midfielders shone bright.

The impact of elite on-ballers in the big games can’t be underestimated, and David Noble is all too aware of that as he looks to develop North Melbourne’s already exciting young list.

“You look at today (Saturday) and it’s really hard to split them at the different ends of the ground,” Noble told ABC Grandstand.

“But the midfield I think is where you can create those windows to create that score or shut it off a little bit.”

Building teams to compete in finals is something Noble has done successfully at both the Adelaide Crows and Brisbane Lions, and that midfield-first focus was on display at his first North Melbourne draft, with the Roos selecting midfielders Will Phillips and Tom Powell in the first round.

“I got a bit criticised earlier in the year around the midfield build. It’s what I’ve done at two other clubs and it’s held them both in really good stead,” he said.

“That’s what we’ve done, taking Will Phillips and Tom Powell in the draft last year.

“You add that in with (Tarryn) Thomas, (Jy) Simpkin, ‘LDU’ (Luke Davies-Uniacke), (Ben) Cunnington, and that’s where we believe our growth is going to come from.”

Another highly touted midfielder, Jason Horne-Francis put his name up in lights on Friday night with a dominant display in the SANFL preliminary final, kicking 3.3 from 24 disposals.

The 18-year-old looms as of the favourites for the prized number one pick at November’s NAB AFL Draft.

“Jason (Horne-Francis), performed extremely well last night (Friday), and he’s certainly well and truly on our radar,” Noble admitted.

“[But] we haven’t reached a decision yet. We’ll get through that once we reach the end of the trade period.

“We’ve all talked about him (Horne-Francis) and watched him, and we know his qualities intimately.

“But whether we call out his name first, or whether there’s another player that we have higher ranked, I’m not too sure at this point.”

Another area that Noble has openly identified as an area of growth is small, pressure forwards.

“It’s an area that we feel we haven’t got enough pressure in,” he added.

“I thought (Jack) Mahony developed really in that role, we used Jed (Anderson) a bit when he came back, and we’ve got Bailey Scott and Curtis Taylor.

“When we looked at the balance of our list, we were probably one or two small forwards down.”