Alastair Clarkson was delighted Brisbane won the flag last season.

And not just because his old mate Chris Fagan was leading the way.

Instead, for Clarkson, the Lions represented the right way of doing things. They had started from the bottom, copped their whacks, rebuilt through the draft, topped up on the way up, learnt from their finals setbacks, and finally saluted.

It was the way Clarkson had done things at Hawthorn, where he took over a four-win team and turned it into a four-time premiership-winning machine. And it is the way he wants to do things at North Melbourne, where the club's journey is ready to start its upward trajectory.

Clarkson has seen such a path taken by numerous successful programs. Hawthorn in the 2010s, Melbourne in the early 2020s, Brisbane last season. Even the Kangas' women's team, AFLW premiers in 2024, had been forced to go through years of finals heartbreak before finally reaching the mountaintop.

All went through what North Melbourne's men's program has gone through, and continues to go through, since Clarkson arrived at the club. But all got there, eventually, providing the experienced coach and his young side with an ideal blueprint to now follow.

"I'm so rapt that Brisbane won it last year and I'm so rapt that our women's program won it last year, because they've done exactly the same thing," Clarkson told AFL.com.au in an exclusive interview at Arden Street this week.

"It's taken them six years of just putting a strategy in place, invest in bringing a group of players through together, knowing full well you're going to have some bumpy roads along the way and a couple of speed humps. That was Brisbane. That was Hawthorn.

"In 2010, we lost an elimination final to Fremantle. In 2011, we lost a preliminary final to Collingwood when we were up at three-quarter time. In 2012, we lost a Grand Final to Sydney when we were in front in the third quarter and we were raging favourites.

"You look at Brisbane's journey over the last four years. Finally, they salute and everyone says, 'Oh well, that was expected'. But the previous three years, they were bagging the shit out of them. They'd fallen in a hole in September. But it's just part of the journey.

"You can say the same thing about North's girls, then they finally win it and everyone's saying, 'Oh I can't see anyone beating the North women over the next few years'. It's like, Christ almighty. Just know, there's no silver bullet to this. The formula is tried and tested, really. And it's over a long, long period of time."

North Melbourne's first two seasons under Clarkson's guidance have yielded just six wins from 46 games, but nothing has shocked the Kangas coach. When both he and the club's football manager Todd Viney joined, they were aware of the task at hand. But while the on-field performances haven't been up to scratch, the full-club reset is going as planned.

"I don't think there's any surprises to it, really," Clarkson said.

"One of the reasons that I took the job, and Todd as well in terms of his role as footy manager, was that we knew there were going to be hard roads. There always is in AFL footy if you want to do it the right way.

"You can try and do it quicker and with much less percentage chance of having success, or you can just put in the hard yards early knowing full well that the first couple of years, in particular, are going to be pretty difficult while you're stabilising your football club.

"There's usually a key reason why your football club is in the bottom four. Some of it can just be bad luck with injury, some of it can be that you've recruited the wrong types of players, some can be the stability of your football club, some can be off-field factors that implicate your club. But, by and large, your club is where it is for a reason.

"North had been in the bottom four for a period of time and we knew we needed to resurrect a whole heap of things within the club. But, usually, it takes you a period of time to be able to do that.

"I feel like, in the last two years, despite the outside football world still just measuring us by wins more or less, we've been measuring ourselves very, very differently. That's around an off-field sense. Key stakeholders in key roles, stability and continuity. Then, from an on-field nature, just bringing together a group of players that can grow through the footy club together."

So what does success look like for North Melbourne this year? With a fanbase determined to finally see some wins, after just 15 victories across the last five seasons, there remains a delicate balance to be struck given the Kangaroos still have the youngest list in the entire competition.

"A key measure for us this year will be how many games are we still really, really competitive in late in games to give us a chance?" Clarkson said.

"Even if we lose some of those games, we're in the game and have the opposition saying, 'Geez North are no longer the easybeats … they're a competitive unit'. If we do that consistently enough, then some of those games are going to turn into victories for us.

"It's how deep we can go into games and, in each game, how many quarters can we win? It's different things, because we know if we stretch ourselves too far, we're very mindful of the fact we have still got a young group.

"We're in a much better position now. We've spent the best part of two years making some pretty significant decisions as a footy club of injecting that youth, including what to the outside world would have been pretty controversial in giving up our first-round draft pick for next year to bring into this year and provide depth in an area of the ground."

That 'controversial' decision – the Matt Whitlock trade – is bound to be a running story throughout the year for North Melbourne. During last November's draft, the Kangaroos shifted their first-round pick in 2025 to the Tigers to return to the order at pick No.27 to select Whitlock. They also got a future second-round selection back.

But Whitlock, a versatile 197cm teenager capable of playing in a key-position role at either end of the field, represented a change in North Melbourne's draft approach from recent years and hinted at the confidence internally at Arden Street that an improvement in ladder position was just around the corner. But how high can the Kangaroos jump in 2025?

"The really bizarre part about it is that you don't put any ceiling on it," Clarkson said.

"All you really try and do is manage expectation. If you come around and make outlandish forecasts of where you're going to finish, particularly around wins and losses and finals and all of the things that the wider football world wants to hear in terms of your projections, then you just set yourself up for a big fail.

"But if you're more tempered and allow the process to look after itself, then there's no ceiling on that. In my third year at Hawthorn, we won 14 or 15 games and played finals for the first time in a long period of time. Brisbane's first two years were dreadful under Fagan, in terms of pure wins and losses, but geez they were doing some heavy lifting and were injecting a lot of kids in. That club turned around in a heartbeat.

"You just get the culture and the environment right in those first couple of years. They had a period of time where they couldn't retain their players, all of these young kids. But they put the right culture in place and the right environment, where these young lads can see growth and can see the projection of where their club is going. In their third year, I think they jumped up and won 16 games.

"Who knows what can happen? Are we ready for that right now? I'd like to think that we're certainly going to be better than last year. But where does it take us for this year? I'm not really sure. All I do know is we haven't put a ceiling on the players.

"Let's not try and sell to the world that we're going to fly to the moon in a day. But let's not limit the possibilities that are there, either. We've seen, in the last two years, sides win premierships and then not make the finals the year after. You could not possibly predict, right now, that Brisbane isn't going to make the finals this year. But who would have predicted that Collingwood was going to miss? Who would have predicted that Geelong was going to miss? It's such an even competition."

Heading into his 20th season as an AFL head coach, Clarkson's motivation to be the person driving North Melbourne into its next successful period remains sky high. While the last two seasons have been gruelling, the 56-year-old tactician expected nothing less. In fact, it's part of the reason he took the job in the first place.

"I knew from the get-go that there were going to be hard yards," Clarkson said.

"That was the intrigue of it, for mine. There were hard yards when I first arrived at Hawthorn, too. Perhaps there were other opportunities to explore and to coach other clubs that would have had more appeal in terms of jumping up the ladder or being more competitive quicker, but part of it was the whole journey.

"We knew what this would look like for the first couple of years, and we had to put some things in place that would be the platform for us to be able to grow. For our supporters that we want to share our journey and our story with, they've been through some hard yards too. Particularly over the last six years.

"But this is not different to the whole North Melbourne story, really. North won one game in 1972, and then they were premiers in 1975. I can remember Hawthorn was very similar. They're blue-collar clubs, who built their success around hard work and good people, and North's no different. That's what we're banking on again this time.

"History, hopefully, will repeat itself, and we give this club a third opportunity of an era to really impose ourselves on the competition and bring some success."