[RELATED: An education process | Photos: Utah day two]

The recruitment of Shaun Higgins and Jarrad Waite is not aimed at bringing immediate success, Brad Scott says.

Following North’s first Preliminary Final appearance since 2007, the pair joined the club during the AFL’s free agency period last month. But the work to get them to Arden Street had started long before that.

“These decisions haven’t been made in haste. We’ve been looking at these two players (Waite and Higgins) for 12 months, and they would have fit in with our list management strategy regardless of where we finished,” Scott told NMFC.com.au from Utah.

“We are not putting pressure on them to take us to the next level. We feel they’ll complement what we already have.

“We are really excited to have both of them on board.”

PRESS PLAY above to hear Scott's thoughts on 2015

The addition of Waite bolsters an already impressive attacking unit, with the likes of Drew Petrie, Aaron Black, Ben Brown and Majak Daw making for an intriguing battle for spots.

“Jarrad will add another dimension to our forward line. We still believe his best football is in front of him, even though he’s closer to the end of his career than the start.”

The former Blue booted 29 goals in 2014, a figure that would have seen him third on the Roos’ goal-kickers list (Drew Petrie 50, Lindsay Thomas 45).

While Waite’s presence in attack will only make North a better side, it’s Higgins who perhaps looms as the wildcard.

“We’ve got really high hopes for Shaun. We are not bringing him in to do anything special or win games off his own boot, but we really feel he’ll add much needed class to our squad,” Scott added.

“We think we can get him in really good physical shape and his best footy is in front of him too.”

Scott is adamant the club won’t put its future success at risk by looking for quick fixes, instead continuing to bolster its stocks across the board.  

“Our strategy is fairly clear. We want to improve our list each year, while securing our future and taking our early draft picks.

“We go to the draft with three early picks again, so we are in a really strong position in the draft, and we had a good trade and free agency period.”

With a strong mix of youth and experience, Scott hinted North will recruit the best player available when its picks come around.

“It will be right up until the day we’ll make our final decisions.

“Plenty of discussions are still being had, but Bryce Lewis (Recruiting Manager) ultimately will make the decision and North Melbourne fans should be really confident that the future’s in great hands, because if you look at his record over the last six years it stacks up against any recruiting manager in the AFL.

“The overriding philosophy is we want to keep getting better. We’ve got a fairly well balanced list, so there’s not a great deal of pressure on Bryce to pick players on a need basis.”

North has picks 16, 25 and 36 at the National Draft on November 27.

NMFC.com.au will be there every step of the way over the next two weeks in Utah. Stay tuned for further updates.