DANNY Daly is central to North Melbourne's knowledge of its opponents, briefing his fellow coaches and players in the lead-up to each game.

This week North (6-14-1) meets Port Adelaide (9-12) at AAMI Stadium on Saturday night.

It's hard to believe that it all finishes up with this game.
It's been a long year internally but unfortunately it has come to an end too quickly.

There must be a terrific feeling around the place though after last weekend's effort.
It was a magnificent performance by the boys. The other coaches and I were just so pleased for them. Some of the younger blokes hadn't experienced a victory like that – to get up and hang on to that lead in the last minute or two. We were a bit worried that St Kilda might sneak a goal and be in the same position as the Richmond game or just get overrun.

How important was the victory when you consider the space between seasons? After this week, it will be five or six months before they start playing for real again.
With the quality opposition that we played, only losing one game for the year, it was just really good for the players to lead into this week. If we can win this week as well, it will take us into a new pre-season with Brad (Scott) at the helm and will give the boys a lot more confidence. When you look at the last eight or nine weeks since Crock (Darren Crocker) has taken over, we've been close and thereabouts. We just haven't been able to finish games off. To be able to do it against the premiership favourite was just terrific.

I imagine there would be a lot of emotion around anyway, because truth is it's the last opportunity for some players to represent North Melbourne.
It is. When you look at the six changes last week, there were a few blokes who hadn't played much football this year: Ed Lower, Alan Obst, Aaron Edwards and Josh Smith. It was a good opportunity to give those blokes a couple of hit-outs and see where they're at. We had 13 or 14 players who had played under 50 games on the weekend. It's just a terrific opportunity for those blokes to play on a big stage and to perform well. Hopefully they have done their future no harm.

Port Adelaide will be feeling the same way but maybe for a slightly different reason given Peter Burgoyne and Brendon Lade have announced their retirements.
They have a bit to play for and mathematically they can still make the finals. By the time we run out on the ground on Saturday night, we'll know whether they can make it or not. Hawthorn and Essendon play Saturday afternoon. Even so, those two blokes have been great servants for the footy club and are very well respected throughout the AFL. Port will be pretty pumped up to give them a good send-off. It's another big test for us.

Hamish McIntosh has said that there's still some hostility left over from round 22 last year.
I spoke about that with the boys on Wednesday. There have been a few big games where they've destroyed us: round 22 last year we went from fourth to seventh and in 2007 we got beaten in a preliminary final over there. In 2005, we finished fifth and they finished eighth and they came over here and smashed us by 12 goals. There's a bit of history in Port Adelaide wrecking our seasons so it's about time we paid them one back.

What do you take from Port's performance last week? If they kick 10 goals in the first quarter this week, it will be hard to will your way back in.
It will be. They're a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. You just don't know what you're going to get with Port Adelaide. They're a very attacking side and they're very good at scoring from stoppages. If they get away from you, they can score very quickly. We can't afford to allow them to kick six or seven goals unanswered. If you look at our record over the last nine weeks, I think we're second in the AFL in pressuring the opposition to turn the footy over and then scoring from that. If we can keep going along that track, we might be able to get hold of them.

That makes the ruck duel between Hamish and Todd (Goldstein) and Lade and Dean Brogan even more interesting.
That will be a good duel between those four. Obviously Lade and Brogan are very experienced and have been a big catalyst for Port Adelaide over the years. We've got Hamish who has had a terrific season after last year's injuries, and Todd is coming along in leaps and bounds. It's an enormous challenge for those two boys, particularly in Lade's last game.

Do you forecast a free-scoring game like round seven? Are you capable of kicking that sort of score again?
That was an interesting game. We didn't go out with the view that we needed to kick 20 goals to win. We thought if we could get 14 or 15 goals and add that pressure I mentioned, then we'd be in the ball park. I think there's going to be a bit of rough weather in Adelaide this weekend so it could be a bit of a scrap and 12 or 13 goals might get us over the line. But if we can stop Port's ability to score heavily, we won't be trying to score seven or eight goals to win it. We'll be attacking as much as we can.

Are you expecting Brad Scott to make the trip? Will he be somewhere in the stands?
I think Brad will be over there somewhere. He'll have a quiet little spot set up and will be watching the boys' performance again, as he did last week. He's obviously very passionate about the club now that he's got the job and it would be in his best interests to go over. I'm sure he got a good handle on the side last week. You can watch these games on TV but you've got to be there live to be able to really appreciate what the boys are doing and what they put into it.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.