Jamie Macmillan believes getting back to basics is the key to North turning its season around.

A dominant first half performance against the Magpies was followed up by a disastrous third term on Sunday, but the defender has told Crocmedia’s Sportsday program there’s no reason to panic.

“You try to move on from it pretty quickly but you don’t want to just gloss over it,” Macmillan said of the loss to Collingwood.

“We basically watched every single goal from that third quarter I think, and knew exactly what happened.

“It wasn’t structural. Between the first half and second half we didn’t change anything and Collingwood didn’t change anything either. It’s just such small things that we’re just not quite getting right.”

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Macmillan said the Roos went away from the things that helped them gain an early advantage.

“It was just a bit of guys not playing the way that we wanted to play, not playing to the instructions that were given to us at half-time,” he said.

“Me for one I tried to take on a tackler and get caught holding the ball and losing the footy. I think Travis Cloke ended up kicking the goal. We flicked to the behind the goals view (in the team’s review) and we had two free guys had I just kicked it forward, which was the instruction.

“We’re just not quite playing the game-plan which is a bit frustrating and we just got undone a little bit.”

Remarkably, North had more inside 50’s than its opponent during the premiership quarter, but conceded nine goals to nil.

“Walking out of the review I was pretty baffled with what I’d seen and pretty frustrated, because it wasn’t like they (the Magpies) outsmarted us or did anything out of the ordinary – they just did the really basics things really well.”

Macmillan said the Roos had quickly identified the areas of improvement.

“It was more about contrasting; this is how we did it in the third quarter … well let’s have a look at what we had done in the same situation in the first half. Low and behold we were all doing the right things and working as one and on the same page, and look what happens – we take the ball out of defensive 50 to our forward 50 and kick a goal.

“Then you look at the contrast in a similar situation in the third quarter. We try and do something too cute and not the way we want to move the footy, or a bit disjointed, and Collingwood kick a goal.”

Next up is the Eagles, a team who have surprised many with their start to the season.

At seven wins and two losses, Adam Simpson’s men are at the peak of their form.

“You’ve got the Brownlow Medalist in Matt Priddis, and Luke Shuey, Chris Masten ... Andrew Gaff really running his wing well. They move the footy really well, so they are very, very dangerous,” Macmillan said.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on the ability to win the contested footy, but I think West Coast are number one, or certainly up there in that statistic.

“There’s a pretty simple formula for us – win the footy inside and get it forward, because if we can win those stats we’ll go a long way towards winning the game.”

While North has been the subject of much criticism for its slow start to the year, Macmillan said there’s still time to turn things around.

“We’ll face up to the fact that we haven’t played particularly good footy at periods of time, and we are four and five and towards the bottom of the ladder,” he said.

“There’s still a lot of footy to be played. We are only at round nine. We’ve got 13 weeks to go.”