Brad Scott won’t buy into talk that his side faces a make or break year. Despite having one of the most experienced and oldest list profiles in the AFL, the senior coach believes North is well placed for the future.

“There’s a school of thought that you are either a genuine contender or you are rebuilding. That there are few teams in between,” Scott told the Herald Sun.

“But to me, things have changed significantly.

“Hawthorn won the premiership last year with the oldest team in the history of the game.

“Sports science has developed to a point now where I think we look after players better than ever now and just because a player turns 30 it doesn’t mean that it is the end for him.

“I’m not underestimating the challenge (to stay in the finals hunt), it’s going to be huge.

“You don’t replace players like Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie. You don’t just slot someone into their position.

“But there are certain mechanisms in place now that allow clubs to approach refreshing their list in a different way.

“So we are not going to make any predictions about where we are in three to five years, but it (this season) is not boom or bust.”

With other sides benefitting from priority picks and high draft selections in recent years, Scott said North was forced to become smarter with its list management and was one of the first clubs to dive into the opportunities Free Agency presented.

“We had ‘first mover’ advantage on free agency,” Scott said.

“And I think in the case of (Shaun) Higgins, (Nick) Dal Santo and (Jarrad) Waite you can mount a pretty strong argument that we have made them (better), or we have developed them as players, even though they were pretty good already.

“But that ‘first mover’ advantage is gone now. It is more competitive (in the free agency market).”

Since Scott took over in 2010, the Roos have had just one top-10 draft pick - Ben Cunnington (No. 5).

“We have had to be very lateral with our thinking,” he said.

“It’s not a simple formula of going to the draft and taking your picks every year and you will be fine.

“That might be easy if you have had consistent five years in a row of top-five draft picks and going back even further when have had priority picks added into that.

“That has been Hawthorn, two top-five picks, and that’s been Collingwood, two top-five picks, they’ve both gone on to win premierships on the back of being really strong, well-run footy clubs.

“But it does help when you go down the bottom and rebuild through that. We have done that through a period of when those things didn’t exist. I think the competition has been better for it.”

The club has invested in the draft, developed its youth and retained a core group of veterans like Harvey, Petrie, Firrito, Daniel Wells and Scott Thompson.

Scott said he’s more vigilant with the senior group and knows they’ll need to make a transition sooner rather than later.

But at age 37, Harvey continues to defy the odds.

“He is a marvel, Brent, in terms of the condition he comes back to train in, but I haven’t noticed a drop-off in six years with him, and I have been watching,” Scott said.

“I have been really looking for it, because it is certainly incumbent on me to make sure we transition all of our veterans.

“I hold him to a high account, but to be honest, I think he enjoys that.”