Despite North’s loss to Melbourne in their first JLT Community Series match, coach Brad Scott believes there were plenty of positives to take from the game.
North travelled to Hobart with the intent of getting significant minutes into its senior players and exposing its younger players at AFL level.
“While there’s a scoreboard you want to be competitive, and in the first half I thought we certainly were,” Scott told the media.
“We came down with very clear objectives to get game-time into our senior players who we think are going to be likely for Round 1, but also a conflicting objective to give opportunities to some young players that haven’t had that opportunity before.
“We thought we got the balance of that right.
"We left ourselves vulnerable in some periods with some inexperienced personnel on the ground, but all-in-all we achieved our objectives.”
The focus for Scott and the players quickly turns to North's second pre-season clash with Richmond on March 7, with the coach expecting to play a side that will significantly mirror a potential Round 1 side.
“I think every team will start to compress their squad a little bit,” Scott said.
“We’ll probably go down to playing 22 or 24 players in the next JLT game against Richmond, and that will be closer to what our Round 1 team will look like.
“We’re far from finalised on that 22 though, because we’ve still got an element of trialling players in different positions.”
One player who looks in a strong position to feature in North’s season-opener is recruit Billy Hartung.
“He put his best foot forward on the weekend,” Scott said.
“We were really keen to see how he would go on the back of a good pre-season, and see if he could provide something that we need a little bit more of, such as that outside run.
“His first outing in North colours was really encouraging.”
Scott understands the need to continue to build towards the future, and although there will be some hurdles along the way, the coach is backing his team to compete with the league’s best going forward.
“Now more than ever, the competition has been equalised to a point where re-building doesn’t take as long as it used to,” Scott added.
“We’ve still got a lot of hard work in front of us in getting young players exposed and up to the level as quickly as possible.
“We think our best is still capable of competing with the best, but our challenge will be just doing that on a consistent basis which is always a challenge with young teams.”