It’s a well-known fact; Melbourne hasn’t beaten North since round 20, 2006.

The Roos’ decade of domination over the Demons is the longest active streak in the AFL and sits at 13 straight wins.

It’s no wonder Paul Roos tried to gloss over it.

“Someone will come up with a stat against North this week I suspect and then against the Bulldogs at Etihad [Stadium in round 20],” he told the club’s webiste.

“Clearly the better we get, the more hoodoos we’re going to break and streaks and all that sort of stuff.

“I think it just identifies what we know; we’re a different team, we’re improving and we’ve still got a long way to go but certainly we’re more capable of winning football games now.”

After beating Collingwood last week, Roos said his team is riding high and will have to produce their best again to get over the in-form Kangaroos.

“They’ve been a good team so certainly last year they made the prelim final and they’ve started to crank themselves up again over the last month but we prepare for the best,” he said.

“We had two games against them last year and the first one was really disappointing and the second one we played some really good football, but we still got beaten by four or five goals. We need to play better and that’s our goal this week.”

It’s unlikely Melbourne will make any changes to its winning side.

“(We’ll) Probably stick with the team, that’s my initial thought,” Roos said.

“It’s harder to make a change when the team has a really good win like that - it was a good team effort.

“Consistency is still an issue, as we saw with the St Kilda game [in round 17], but it was a really good win [against Collingwood] to kick 13 goals and to keep a team to seven. It was a really, really good balance of offense and defence.”

With three wins and three losses over the last six weeks, Roos said his team is starting to find more confidence.

“Hopefully they’re getting belief along the way I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, they’re starting to believe in their teammates, they’re starting to believe in the coaches,” he said.

“So it’s really minimising those down periods and maximising the up periods, which have been really, really good and that’s probably the goal for the next five games – to play our best football for longer and our worst football, well, we hope we don’t see that too often.”

Roos said Mark Jamar and Matt Jones are on the cusp of a recall to the senior side but are unlikely to get an opportunity this week.

“We’re talking to a lot of those guys and reinforcing their behaviours and making sure they’re valued around the club, because if you’re not making many changes, it is hard [for them],” he said.

“Russian (Jamar) is in a really tough position. I spoke to him last week for 10 minutes about how close he was to [playing] against the two ruckmen from Collingwood, but he understands why at the moment he’s not getting game.

“As long as they understand and keep working hard – that’s all we can ask.”