THE CHALLENGE facing North Melbourne is reflective of the challenge facing the AFL, Alastair Clarkson believes.

The Kangas have now spent six straight years in the League's bottom three since opting to undergo a full scale list rebuild. It's added to a decade without finals football, nearly 20 years since a top four finish on the ladder, and more than 25 since last seeing a premiership.

In the last six years, the club has won just 20 games total. For context, Brisbane managed 19 last season alone.

The struggle is a real one, and Clarkson believes it should have the AFL questioning whether draft-led rebuilds are realistic anymore. For the North Melbourne coach, it has also made expectations for the season ahead difficult to measure. A young Kangas outfit, stacked with talent recruited from the early parts of the draft, should be improving. But that natural improvement is taking more time than ever. So, when is it realistic for the Arden Street club to make the jump?

"It's a difficult question to answer," Clarkson tells AFL.com.au.

"The game is as tough as it has ever been. You only need to go to Essendon, Richmond, West Coast, North Melbourne, a couple of others perhaps to see that. You see what's happened with St Kilda, it's nearly like you've got to do something absolutely out of the box radical to break this mould of getting yourself out of the bottom eight or 10 sides in the competition and give yourself a chance to get into the top part.

"I think it's a concern for the competition. If you're fortunate enough, right at this point in time, to be in the top echelon, I don't think there's a club and their board sitting there and saying to themselves that the strategy is to rebuild, go to the bottom, rebuild through the draft … it'll never happen again, unless something changes.

"For those clubs that are unfortunately in the bottom bracket of clubs at the moment, trying to rebuild your club through the draft is as tough as it has ever been. For mine, there needs to be an understanding from the League of how difficult it is. There needs to be an understanding from the general public around how difficult it is.

"What comes from that is a necessity to have patience, because it can't be turned around overnight. I've got enormous faith that we will be able to find a way. (But) it's bloody difficult. Really, really difficult. Hopefully, there's some levers somewhere within the AFL that they can pull.

"I know there's all sorts of things around competitive balance and equalisation and that sort of stuff, but the basic thing underpinning the whole game is they want everyone to win once every 18 years and then shoot away for the next 17 years so someone else can win it. They want it to be a socialistic system. It is everything bar that. If you happen to be in the bottom six, it is really tough going.

"But we're seeing progress. We're seeing progress with our younger players and we're excited with where we can go. It's just the burn is a hell of a lot slower than I thought it was going to be. The challenge is there for all the clubs in the bottom part of the ladder, to try to work out a way how they can get themselves really competitive and get themselves in the top eight."

Since electing to 'bottom out', North Melbourne has taken 13 players inside the first round of the draft. It's those youngsters – Tom Powell, Harry Sheezel, George Wardlaw, Colby McKercher, Zane Duursma, Taylor Goad, Wil Dawson, Riley Hardeman, Finn O'Sullivan, Matt Whitlock and Lachy Dovaston among them – that the club hopes will spur on the next phase of the side's development.

But how long that takes remains anyone's guess, as the club's collection of young talent gets up to grips with AFL footy and cements their place in the Kangas' plans for this season and beyond.

"There's a group of middle-tier guys that we've seen emerge in the last couple of years. The Paul Curtis' and the Tom Powell's and the Charlie Comben's and those sorts of guys, who are now into their fifth year of footy and have played anywhere from 50 to 100 games. We've seen them make progress, now they're starting to emerge as consolidated players," Clarkson says.

"When you get a crop of players through the middle part of their careers … when they first start out, it's 'Can they get on an AFL list? Can they get a game?' Then the next stage is can they stay in the side and consolidate their spot? By the time they get into their fourth or fifth year, they've consolidated in the side now and they're sick of losing and want to actually do something about it.

"All of this young talent, some of these kids have been in our system for two years and they're just young bodies that are getting stronger. Only our supporters will have seen them, 17 other clubs haven't really seen them.

"That group of guys has been our only real mechanism to try to get our club back to being competitive … it's going to the draft and bringing in young talent. They're not four or five years into their career yet. It's still the Harry Sheezel's, the George Wardlaw's, the Colby McKercher's and the Finn O'Sullivan's and the Lachy Dovaston's, the Wil Dawson's and the Taylor Goad's.

"We're seeing the emergence and the growth of those guys, but they're still not at the level where they're consolidated members of our senior side and ready to make significant input in terms of us climbing the ladder really quickly. That's the slow burn and the slow build part of it. That's why I'm saying it's a little bit slower this time."

When Clarkson says 'this time', he's comparing North Melbourne's position to Hawthorn's when he took charge of the club back in 2004. The Hawks, likewise, rebuilt through the draft but had more mechanisms to improve quicker than the Kangas have available this time around.

Hawthorn, through priority picks and other measures, used three top-10 picks in 2004, three top-20 picks in 2005 and two top-25 picks in 2006 to build the foundations for the side's success in 2008, then into the golden run of 2013-15.

"When I first arrived at Hawthorn, the first two years they gave us priority picks," Clarkson says.

"If you were a poorly performed side … the first draft that we participated in Richmond, the Bulldogs and Hawthorn all had priority picks. Richmond got Brett Deledio, Hawthorn got Jarryd Roughead, the Bulldogs got Ryan Griffen. Three pretty handy players that are just gifted to you. You've got double.

"If you get that over a couple of years like Hawthorn did, the next year we got Xavier Ellis as a priority pick, and it's coupled with Lance Franklin and Grant Birchall and these guys, then wow. You've doubled your opportunity to get talent in. You might be able to do it six months or 12 months quicker or whatever.

"That's the challenge that we've got now. The other significant challenge is you can't recruit out of Northern Territory, New South Wales or Queensland and in 12 months' time you won't be able to recruit out of Tasmania.

"In addition to that, the last time I was involved in this type of thing of trying to get your footy club from the bottom part of the ladder to the top, there was no free agency. There are all of these levers and mechanisms that have been pulled into the game. Free agency, we thought, was a ripper. The bottom clubs would throw the chequebook out there. But if you're a free agent, you don't want to go to a bottom club. They're happy enough that they're getting paid well enough. They want success. That makes it even more difficult.

"You've got a top of the ladder side like Brisbane, who are a terrific side and are well coached and have done an amazing job up there in turning their side around, but the levers that they've been able to pull … now they get the benefit of being in the position that they are and players want to go to their club.

"They get two free agents in Sam Draper and Oscar Allen. It's pretty handy. If you happen to lose a Callum Ah Chee, or big Oscar McInerney decides to retire because his back is crook, no drama. We've got a couple of handy replacements."

While Clarkson admits the burn has been slower than he thought it would when he first took charge of North Melbourne in 2022, he's confident the ship will right itself eventually. But, when that happens remains anyone's guess.

For now, the club is looking towards Melbourne champion Jack Viney – the son of North Melbourne footy boss Todd Viney – as inspiration as it plots a journey back towards the top of the table.

"Todd and myself, in particular, we knew," Clarkson says.

"That's what we were excited around, that challenge. We're not afraid. I don't care if it takes 10 years, really. For mine, the harder it is, the greater the challenge, the greater the reward when you finally get there.

"Ironically enough, I use Jack Viney as an example of that. Numerous times, Jack had the chance … he's such a loyal and committed kid. I've known him since he was this big, obviously because of Todd. Numerous times, he had the chance to say it was going nowhere.

"In his first six years of footy, he had eight coaches or nine coaches or something like that. It was so tumultuous and unstable for that period of time. But there was enough around his loyalty and commitment, but also with his mates, to say he was going to hang in there.

"When they eventually salute and win that flag over in Perth, that for me says he's hung in there on the journey for the right reasons. It's good values, not trying to jump ship, then finally saluting.

"For mine, when you're saying that you've played 10 or 15 years of footy, then it's just like life. You've seen it all. You've seen what it's like to be at the top, you've seen what it's like to try to become competitive, you've seen what it's like to be in the doldrums and turning over coaches and changing CEOs and board upheaval and all sorts of things.

"That's life. But it's the life of AFL footy, too."