In today's AFL, recruiting has become vital to club success. A missed opportunity at the Draft can be detrimental and the pressure on recruiting teams is greater than ever before.

North Melbourne's team, led by Bryce Lewis, leaves no stone unturned in order to unearth the best talent on offer. Lewis explains to kangaroos.com.au the painstaking research and time put into recruiting players to the Kangaroos.

"Obviously the weekends are critical given that's when the majority of games take place. We're out watching a variety of games at different levels and locations," Lewis said.

"Then on Monday morning, Mark Finnigan (assistant recruiting manager), Brady Rawlings (senior recruiter and induction coach) and myself meet to discuss what we've seen over the weekend and how various players are progressing.

"We'll also plan for the upcoming weekend. A lot of that involves determining who's going where to see whom. Often our travel is planned quite a bit in advance, but nonetheless we'll go over which games we're attending and identify the players we need to make a focus of."

Bryce and his team's work doesn't stop there. During the week there are list management meetings and discussions with their talent pathway contacts, not to mention an almost overwhelming amount of vision from the previous weekend of games to work through.

"Each week we receive match vision of all the TAC Cup and VFL competitions, all three levels of the WAFL and the SANFL and the other state leagues. The vision is time-coded, which means there are individual edits on every player that participates in those games. It's an enormous volume of vision that we get.

"It's important to plan who watches what vision, because much of our week is spent in front of our monitors and you want to cover off on as much as possible.

Having Finnigan and Rawlings alongside him is a blessing for Lewis.

"A lot of what Mark and Brady do is very similar to me and we share related day-to-day duties. It's a terrific position to be in where we have three full-timers in the office and you can constantly bounce things off one another and debate the merits of certain players over others.

"The more information you have, the better placed you are to make sound decisions."

Casting the net even further, North Melbourne employs multiple part-time staff across Australia to ensure no player slips through.

"We employ two part-time staff in Perth, two in Adelaide, one each in Hobart and Brisbane and also have a couple of guys who assist us here in Victoria.

"We're so grateful for the commitment and effort of our part-time recruitment staff who serve us wonderfully, often for very little credit. However, internally at North Melbourne they're extremely highly valued, " Lewis added.

Lewis and his team take as much information on board as possible in the early stages of the season in an effort to identify exactly what types of players are out there with reference to what North's specific needs are.

"For the first half of the year it's all about getting to know the playing pool and their respective strengths and weaknesses. We do that with the assistance of our part-time network around Australia. Those guys submit reports every week based on what they've seen and they're very important.

The National Championships, traditionally in late May and early June, serve as a tipping point for the focus of the team according to Lewis.

"In the second half of the year and particularly after the National Under 18 championships, that's when we start to become a bit more specific. We'll undertake interviews with players and their families, also their coaches and talent managers.

"When we're getting a bit more specific and have an understanding of the (draft) pool we'll begin to have a look at off-field."