An unacceptable performance. That’s the message from David Noble following North Melbourne’s disappointing first half against Essendon.

After promising efforts against Melbourne and Collingwood, followed by an emotional victory against Hawthorn, North was well beaten by the Bombers, falling by 72 points. 

Like every week, there are positives and learning experiences to be taken from defeat, but Noble says the slow start from his side must be rectified as soon as possible.

“We don’t want to be a club that rallies for a bloody quarter, that’s the frustrating and disappointing thing. We’ve got to rally from the start,” Noble said.

“It was poor, it was really poor on our side. We let them (the Bombers) start well, we couldn’t wrestle anything back. We got a tiny little bit of momentum in the third quarter and we got a lesson.

“We were beaten all around the ground. Defenders have got to defend, forward have got to compete and create stoppages, mids have got to win stoppages and then they’ve got to get into the general play.

“We’ve got a group who are great learners and we’ve seen that so far, we’ll adjust … we’ll look at where we sit and we’ll restock ourselves.”

One shining light in an otherwise bleak performance was the continued improvement of Kayne Turner, with the former pressure-forward thriving in his new lock-down role.

Having run through the midfield as a tagger earlier in the season, Turner was thrown into the defensive 50 to curb the influence of the always dangerous Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti.

The Bombers live-wire was restricted to just 10 disposals, his tied lowest output in 2021.

Noble says Turner’s willingness to sacrifice his game for the team shows his value to this group.

“‘Kayne-o’ is just one of those guys where you ask him to play somewhere and he just says ‘no worries’,” he said.

“That’s why he’s in the leadership group. He’s a great leader in the aspect of he’s diligent and he does the work.

“You could tell him to spend the whole first quarter on the bench and he’d say ‘yep, no worries’. That’s the attitude he brings [and] it’s a credit to him.”

With just one fixture left before the bye, North’s intensity and commitment to improvement is not wavering.

With the post-game debrief in full swing, Noble says he has already identified where North’s biggest improvements need to lie ahead of the Round 11 clash with St Kilda.

“Our defensive layers were non-existent a little bit today whereas the previous three or four weeks we’ve been really good at those. We’ll have to rejig those as to reasons why,” he said.

“Our post-clearance release wasn’t good enough ... they (the Bombers) were able to get to the fall of the ball quicker than we were … we just couldn’t chase them down out of that stoppage … the contest today was the one that was disappointing. 

“We’ve been really clear with the way we’ve pulled our game apart, what we’ve looked at, what’s gone well and what we need to grow on.”