Glenn Archer has urged the Kangaroos to ignore the club's last effort against Essendon as it prepares for its Elimination Final. The North legend says too much water has gone under the bridge and the defeat is now irrelevant.

“I don’t think Round 1 is going to have anything to do with this game," Archer told NMFC.com.au.

"It was 23 weeks ago and both teams have changed a lot since then. I don’t reckon they’ll use it as any motivation."

Archer believes the fact the Roos are playing one of their arch rivals should be enough motivation.

"What they’ll use is that it’s a do or die final and it’s just the Essendon Football Club as a whole. Every time we played Essendon, there was always something about that or older players telling us about how much they disliked Essendon.

“As we all know, they’re our number one rivals and we tend to get ourselves up a little more for Essendon than other clubs. It dates back a long way, Essendon knocked us off in our first Grand Final back in 1950.

“Sheeds (Kevin Sheedy) used to wind us up a bit with the marshmallows as well; he was very good at that and pushing our buttons.”

North's recent finals disappointment should also be a major driver for the current group with club pride on the line.

“We haven’t won a final in seven years. If you’re going to go places, you’ve got to win finals football.”

The two-time premiership player and veteran of 24 finals knows only too well what it takes to play deep in September.

“A lot of people say you’ve just got to try and treat it as another game. That’s not true, there’s a lot more on the line than four points, it’s a final.

“There’s extra anxiety, there’s extra nerves and that motivated me even more. When you’re going into a game where it could be your last for the year, you’ve got to find something extra.

Speaking to the players on Monday night at Arden Street, Archer told them what he did before games in order to be ready for the first bounce.

“If you don’t set yourself mentally, you’re preparing to fail. I spent a lot of time visualising what I wanted to get out of the game and different moments in the game and what I wanted to do in those.

“For some reason when I was visualising and there was red and black involved, I tended to get a little more hyped up.”