Much has been said of North’s ability to hit the scoreboard, but it’s the Roos’ work without the footy that has impressed the opposition most.

St Kilda coach Alan Richardson rates his team’s pressure as the “cornerstone” of its game, and admits the heat will be on early in Sunday’s twilight clash with North statistically one of the better pressure sides. 

“There's no doubt it'll be a challenge (playing North),” Richardson said on Friday.

“They're a good team in really good form, (they're) undefeated obviously. The challenge is in front of us.

While North has been one of the highest scoring teams in the competition so far this year, it was forced to scrap it out in a low-scoring affair to get the win last week.

“I thought what the Kangaroos did to the Bulldogs was equally as impressive,” Richardson said.

“The Kangaroos have won in close contests, so they've been really strong there. Generally they've been high scoring games up until last week, so I think Scotty and his players will take a fair bit out of that.

“They’ve been very impressive in the contest. Their pressure, we talk about our pressure and the fact that's the cornerstone to our game ... they're number one in the competition by a fair way.

“So they've been really strong in the physicality and pressure game and we're going to need to be good to be able to cope with that, but also to be able to make sure we live up to our end of the bargain and dish a bit out.”

The Saints were impressive in their win over Melbourne last week, taking their record to two wins from six matches.

They defeated Collingwood in Round 3 and pushed Hawthorn all the way in a three-point loss the following week.

“We think our last month of games have been pretty solid. The GWS game (47-point loss) was disappointing. The positives are when you are not playing well and you're within in 10 points at three quarter time, that's a fair reflection of a lot of things that we're heading in the right direction,” Richardson said.

“We thought our Collingwood performance was strong. We thought our Hawthorn performance was positive. We thought last week against the Demons was positive.

“So, there's a bulk of footy there that on the whole is heading in the right direction, and we now look forward to apply a methodology and our want and our hunger and the way we want to play against a team that's undefeated.”