Vice-captain Jack Ziebell says North will have gained confidence from its performance against Sydney, despite falling by nine points.

The Roos took it right up to the Swans, and could easily have walked away with four points, if they’d made the most of their forward entries.

“Obviously it was disappointing to lose on the weekend, but from the performance we put up against Hawthorn (Round 21) I thought we took a couple of steps in our regaining our confidence back and playing the way we want to play,” Ziebell said on Monday.

“But it was still disappointing to lose the game against quality opposition. Sydney is obviously a really good side and we were disappointed not to get the win.”

While North is a near-certainty to play finals, Ziebell’s focus is on this week, and a clash against the Giants at Etihad Stadium.

“We are not here to make the numbers up. We are here to give it a crack. We understand we’ve got a lot to improve on before finals come and this week against GWS is a great test for what we are going to expect later in the year.

“They are a really good side, GWS. We are going to have our hands full and it’s going to be a great test of where we are at.

“We want to win every game and we want to hopefully hit September in winning form and make sure we get off to a good start.”

Despite losing nine of their last 12 games, Ziebell said the Roos backed their systems to stand up at the pointy end of the season.

“We’ve always had confidence in what we can do and how we can do it, it’s just making sure we go out and execute,” he said.

“We didn’t do that against Bulldogs a few weeks ago, and against Hawthorn we didn’t do that too well. Against Sydney we had a major focus on trying to execute what we wanted to do. We did that for the most part, but the disappointing thing was we didn’t get the four points.”

North are set to recall some key players in the coming weeks, with Luke McDonald, Ben Jacobs and Sam Wright all playing in the VFL in the past fortnight.

Shaun Higgins could make his return as early as this week.

“It’s been a long year for Higgo. He’s been training the house down, so we’ll be excited to get him back this week or next,” Ziebell added.

“I think he’ll be raring to go and he can’t wait to get back out there.”