Three very good quarters weren’t enough for victory against Sydney, with turnovers crippling North Melbourne’s efforts in the second term.

In a quarter when the defensive unit held up relatively well considering the Swans had a monstrous 22 inside 50’s, North just couldn’t get it out of the back half.

Darren Crocker explained how it all unfolded in his post-match media conference.

"Turnovers just killed us, their first six goals of the game came from our turnovers, giving the ball back to them,” he said.

"You always know with Sydney they're going to come after you and their pressure's going to be pretty high.

"But you've got to be able to absorb that pressure and for the most part we did, but just for that period of time we just coughed the ball up too much."

After the long break, and some stern words from Crocker, North re-emerged from the rooms and set about working its way back into the match.

The pressure from the Kangaroos increased significantly, and it was reflected in how they were able to hit the scoreboard.

In the first half the entire deficit could be placed down to the scores from turnovers. This flipped around as North was not only able to restrict the Swans, but hit the scoreboard at the other end.

Drilling down further, the pressure closer to goal was the main key for the near comeback. Heading into the match, Sydney had conceded more than a quarter of its total from turnovers coming from its defensive 50.

North was able to exploit the vulnerability in its own forward half; all six of its goals after half-time came from Swans’ turnovers.

So while North had sorted that area of the game out, it failed to take advantage of its clearance dominance, as Crocker highlighted.

“To win the clearances (43-27) so convincingly and then still not come away with a win goes to show we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit."

The majority of the edge came from centre bounces, which North won by a vast margin of 16-3. Todd Goldstein was again one of the best players on the ground with 17 disposals, 37 hit-outs and six tackles.

However the edge Goldstein gave to his midfielders came to almost naught. 16 centre bounce clearances resulted in six behinds.

Sydney was forced to resort to sending a third man up to stoppages around the ground, finishing with 10 hit-outs in this way.

Finally, a note on North’s accuracy. While the set-shot woes had been well documented between Round 7-9, and there were two late misses on Saturday night, by and large that wasn’t the issue during the game.

In a rare occurrence, North kicked a combined 2.9 from scoring shots on the run and snaps. It kicked 6.3 from set shots.