David Noble has challenged his team to produce more regular four-quarter displays, after a "poor" third term on Saturday night against Fremantle. 

The Roos lost by 51 points in enemy territory at Optus Stadium, their sixth straight defeat, despite winning several key statistical categories. 

It came off the back of a much-improved display against Geelong the week previous. 

“I thought our third quarter was poor. We weren’t happy with a number of efforts coming in the back end of that second half,” Noble told North Media.

“There’s a level of expectation we consistently talk about in regards to effort. The game doesn’t care how old you are or what team you put on the paddock, so with that comes expectation that we need to step up and deliver in regards to our effort and intensity.

“We’ve just got to keep chipping away, we’ve got to have an energy that remains in our group … and we’ve just got to continue to learn how we need to play this game in order to be competitive and move up the ladder. That’s the bottom line.”

North led its opposition in disposals for the first time this season, indicating its massive improvement in the ability to manage games with the ball in hand.

Noble says the deliberate effort to slow the game down at certain points is indicative of the ability of his side to alter plans on the fly.

“The fact they were able to slow the ball down a little bit, take a little bit of heat out of the game … we actually seemed to be really well organised when we moved the ball forward,” he said.

“I think we ended up with nine inside 50 marks as well. What that does is it also allows you to get your defence into shape, playing a little bit more controlled.

“Earlier in the year when we went really quick we got bounced really quickly and we were conceding a lot of turnover scores from the corridor … once we were able to do some more work on our defence that lends itself to being a little bit more patient with the ball.”

After struggling to halt Fremantle’s momentum in the third quarter, North headed into the last term down by six goals.

Despite failing to reduce the margin, Noble says he was impressed by his team’s effort to work itself back into the contest and use the ball well in the back half of the ground.

“I think in some earlier games we haven’t been able to stem the flow at certain times, but I thought our guys adjusted reasonably well,” he said.

“We battled reasonably well in the last quarter, we had chances to score but our forwards a bit higher up the ground tried to densify the ground in our two thirds of the ground.

“I think when you go across and look our front half possession game scoring was reasonable, but score differential in stoppages was poor and I think that’s where we need probably more effort and intensity around the competitiveness of our ball in stoppages.”