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NORTH MELBOURNE coach Brad Scott says the Kangaroos are expecting anything but a walkover when they take on Greater Western Sydney at Blundstone Arena in Hobart on Sunday afternoon.
The Giants have strengthened their team, with star recruit Tom Scully to play his first game for the club, while veteran signings Dean Brogan and Luke Power have also been selected.
"It's been a really diligent preparation," Scott said at Aegis Park on Good Friday morning.
"There's obviously only the one game of AFL-level footy to judge them on, but they were extremely impressive two weeks ago against Sydney.
"We were, like most people, very surprised by how hard they were in the contest.
"To break even with Sydney in the clearances, and to do exceptionally well in contested possession … was a fantastic performance on those fronts.
"We know that we're going to get a genuine, competitive effort from them.
"We're not going down there just expecting them to hand [a win] to us on a silver platter.
"We're going down there for a serious game."
Scott doesn't subscribe to the talk that the Giants are employing a more defensive game-plan than Gold Coast used in its first season.
"I think that's a little bit of a fallacy," Scott said.
"The reason they were so competitive, in my view, is that they were really intense at the contest - led by Callan Ward, Rhys Palmer and James McDonald."
Scott wants his players to use more guile in attack after they appeared overly reliant on Drew Petrie during last weekend's narrow loss to the Bombers.
"We did think we bombed the ball a little bit too much last week and played into Essendon's hands," Scott admitted.
"I thought we'd get a better contest in the air from our forwards and our rucks, and that's something we'll look to improve this week.
"I think Hamish [McIntosh] and Todd Goldstein will be really looking to respond after their performance last week - Goldy in particular.
"And we'll give them another chance to respond."
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Petrie, meanwhile, is celebrating the birth of his first child, with Abby Jade having arrived on Thursday afternoon.
"It's great news," Scott said. "Those things are more important than football, but we are fortunate that it happened during the week rather than on the weekend."
Petrie will be on the plane on Saturday morning when the Kangaroos fly to Hobart.
He and his teammates will prepare for the first ever premiership season match at Blundstone Arena by training at the ground on Saturday afternoon.
A sell-out crowd of around 15,000 is expected to attend Sunday's game.
"Everyone's genuinely excited about heading down to Hobart," Scott said.
"We've been down there a number of times already … and we’ve done an enormous amount of work engaging the people of Hobart.
"We coming down there to engage a community not just play two games a year.
"They're a footy-mad group of people, so … whether they're Kangaroos supporters or not, they just want to see AFL footy in their town.
"Hopefully we'll get a few people coming along to watch us train."
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