North Melbourne has taken a cautious approach with veteran forward Jarrad Waite in the hope he can launch an "assault" on the second half of the season.

The 35-year-old injured his calf in the warm-up to last week's win over Brisbane, and was replaced in the side by debutant Tom Murphy.

Waite, who has been in excellent form for the Roos this season with 22 goals from nine games, has also been left out of his side's trip to Geelong to face the Cats on Saturday.

North coach Brad Scott said on Friday the club had decided earlier this week it would not rush Waite back, particularly considering it has the bye next round.

"He's very close. But we probably made a decision early in the week he wouldn't play just purely in terms of risk management," he said.

"We go into a bye next week, so it makes a lot of sense to give him at least another two weeks to fully recover so he can launch an assault on the second half of the year.

"When you weigh up all the pros and cons, even if the medical staff had said he was 100 per cent, then I wouldn't have thought it would be the prudent thing to play him this week."

A similar line of thinking applied to Jed Anderson, who is out of the Cats' clash with a hamstring injury. The Roos will miss Anderson, who has been a revelation this season in their midfield.

"Jed's a lot younger than 'Waitey' and has had pretty good continuity through this season, but again he's very, very close. In terms of the risk vs. reward, it makes a lot of sense to make sure he's absolutely right with the bye next week," Scott said.

North has surprised many this season, winning seven games in the first half of the year and dispelling predictions they would finish near the bottom of the ladder.

Another test comes against the fifth-placed Cats at GMHBA Stadium, particularly against their star-studded midfield. Scott said his shutdown gun Ben Jacobs would likely spend time on a number of the highly-rated Cats.

"As there understandably is a lot of focus on [Gary] Ablett, [Joel] Selwood and [Patrick] Dangerfield, but Mitch Duncan has been in really, really good form and is an important player for Geelong. And Tim Kelly has been a revelation this year," Scott said.

"I don't want to take away from Sam Menegola either, so they're a very deep midfield. Ben's going to have a role in there on one of them, and I suspect more than one at different stages in the game."

Scott added that he had not spoken to the AFL umpiring department about the treatment star forward Ben Brown has received in marking contests.

Brown is leading this year's Coleman Medal with 35 goals.

"If we think it's going to be an ongoing issue then we'll certainly follow up with the umpires, but we looked at all of the instances of Ben's one-on-one or two-on-one contests throughout last week," he said.

"We felt while there may have been some infringements, umpires make mistakes and they see some and they miss some. We're really confident the umpires are looking for the right things."