North Melbourne will back its youngsters to help the club rise back up the ladder in quick time, GM Football Cameron Joyce says.

The Roos head into next month’s NAB AFL Draft with two picks inside the top 25, and while a bid to land further early picks ultimately didn’t come to fruition, it certainly wasn’t through lack of trying.

North drew criticism from sections of the media for its approach during the exchange period, but what seemed to be a quiet trade week for the club was far from that.

“We were definitely aggressive in our pursuit of trying to improve our list,” Joyce told SEN.  

“We peddled pretty hard through this period to look at upgrading our picks and looking at all mechanisms to improve around our own players, around our own draft picks and our future draft picks.

“We would’ve loved to have another first round draft selection, but we weren’t able to obtain that through trading our own players, or moving up the order with draft picks.”

With the performance and future of the club in the public eye, Joyce re-iterated the Roos’ need for midfield speed, but said they’d take a measured approach.  

“We could’ve done the snatch and grab and spent some money (in trade week), but potentially flittered away a little bit through this period on just to say ‘we’ve got a bag full of stuff and look what we’ve got’; but we’ve decided to say ‘okay let’s hold our draft picks, let’s hold our nerve a bit and let’s put the money in the savings account and look at it again next year’.

“We were after some real elite talent, which was obvious to everyone throughout the year … when that didn’t happen, then our draft strategy kicked in around our picks 4 and 23.”

Joyce said the club was disappointed with a 15th-placed finish in 2017, but the continued development of its youngsters and the return of some key players from injury will hold North in good stead going forward.

“We’ve got 20 players that are under 50 games with another six or eight that will come in this year through the national draft and rookie draft,” he added.

“We’re pretty keen to back those guys in to really improve – we’ve got a hell of a lot of improvement left in our list.”

North will have picks 4, 23, 64, 78, 91 and 96, having exchanged its third-round pick to bolster the bidding process for potential academy and father-son-selections in 2018.