North Melbourne senior coach Alastair Clarkson says his side will have to combat the many weapons Port Adelaide has at its disposal as he prepares for an opposition that has won its past five matches.

Clarkson named the Power's key position stocks in Aliir Aliir as the "best drop-off defender" and Charlie Dixon as the "best pivotal contest forward in the competition".

The senior coach said there is no time to be only worrying about former North Melbourne player Jason Horne-Francis as Clarkson is focused on stopping many players from the Power outfit.

"We've got to stop him from what he does best which is playing good footy, but outside of that … we've got some further worry than just worrying about one player," Clarkson said.

Clarkson said there is no grudges towards the former No.1 pick who was drafted to North Melbourne in 2021 before requesting a trade to return to South Australia after just one season in blue and white.

"For Port Adelaide and us it's done and dusted, we've moved on, Jason and Port Adelaide have moved on … for us he's just another Port Adelaide player," Clarkson said.

The highly anticipated clash will be North Melbourne's first appearance at Blundstone Arena this season.

Clarkson said he felt his side "made some progress against the Saints last week" and was tracking in the right direction.

"The scoreboard and the game itself maybe looked ugly, but it was a real arm-wrestle in terms of the competitiveness of the game," he said.

"We stopped St Kilda from doing what they want to be able to do, which is run the ball freely and score easily and they weren’t able to do that so we made it difficult for them to play against us, unfortunately for us they made it difficult for us too because we couldn’t score."

The senior coach said the low score was attributed to "mucking up opportunities" and his side not nailing its chances.

In other club news, Clarkson announced that if Tarryn Thomas ticks all his boxes then "the plan will be that he comes back into the full-time AFL program from next week".

Thomas played his first game back with the VFL on Sunday against Sandringham and will also play against Frankston this Saturday.

"From what I understand he's been progressing really well with the program that was put in place for him over the last four-to-six weeks which includes some work placement stuff that he's done," Clarkson said.

In terms of AFL selection, Clarkson is unsure how long it will take for Thomas to put his hand up to come into the side.

"Whether it's a one-week time frame or a six-week time frame or longer, I couldn’t tell you right now," Clarkson said.