North Melbourne’s performance on Sunday against Sydney was representative of what Shaun Higgins believes is the evenness of the competition.

One week after beating Adelaide by 59 points, the Roos fell to Sydney by 42 points.

“I think just across the board we were off and it shows the evenness of the competition,” Higgins told ABC Grandstand after the match.

“It looks like we’re miles off from last week but it’s only a small percent and it shows when good sides come to play, they can get away from us.”

The importance of staying balanced was a topic earlier in the season when North lost its first five matches.

It’ll again be a focus after the defeat by Sydney.

“It’s just a given with the results, especially the last couple of weeks that you see that, you’ve only got to be a little bit off and any team these days will capitalise on that,” Higgins said.

“That’s why you can’t get carried away when you play well and when you get done like that, we bounce straight back up because you know that next week presents an opportunity for us.”

The majority of Higgins’ 21 disposals came during his midfield stints, but he identified the main area for improvement this week on the training track.

“There were some areas – especially contested ball which we pride ourselves on – we were poor today, and we’ll look forward to turning that around next week.

“We were about 36 down in contested possession in the first half, so we probably broke even in the second half.

“But the game, realistically when you look at it, was probably won in the first half.

“It’s something we’ll need to address and we’re usually good at that so I’m confident we’ll bounce back. It’s a good learning curve for us.”