SEVEN wins and seven losses.

North Melbourne hasn't won this many matches in a season since 2019.

The Roos' 25-point win over Richmond on Sunday afternoon was the club's second win in consecutive weeks, but coach Alistair Clarkson is under no illusion of where his side sits in the scheme of things.

"This footy club hasn't been seven and seven at this stage of the season for well over a decade, I don't think," Clarkson said post-match.

TIGERS v KANGAROOS Full match coverage and stats

"We just know that we've got a lot of work to do. We're a long way (off) and we found that out over the last six weeks playing some of the better sides in the competition.

"A couple of those games we competed really, really strongly and went deep into the game with some of those high quality sides but overall we fell well short of the top brass in the competition.

"We've got nine games to go and we'll just keep pegging away at our game and try to get better each week and try to avoid disappointing performances like we had against Fremantle three weeks ago.

"Just put together a consistent effort. I thought even though the scoreboard wasn't ticking as favourably as I'd like. It was just a real slugfest contest today."

Young key forward Cooper Trembath was pivotal to the side's win, kicking a career-high four goals in the match including two in the third quarter as the Roos started to break away from their opposition.

Clarkson said he was pleased with his young forward, who had been held reasonably quiet in recent weeks.

"He (Trembath) just dropped away in terms of his competitiveness in the air and his ground level stuff from earlier in the season and the back part of last season. I thought he returned to some of that today," Clarkson said.

"He's a player in probably the most difficult position to play on the ground, key forward. For a young player they're going to have their ebbs and flows."

Richmond coach Adem Yze labelled his side's performance as "frustrating".

"It was just a really frustrating game," Yze said.

"Starting the game with allowing 48 uncontested marks or whatever it was in the first quarter, sort of set the tone for what the game was going to be.

"And obviously it was a plan for them to try to deny our pressure. We were trying to make adjustments, we felt we got it better for the rest of the game, but it's just not up to standard."

The Tigers were kept to three goals for the first three quarters, something that Yze put down to his team's energy levels.

"I think it was energy. We used all of our energy on defence and in our execution on offence, it was affected by it," Yze said.

"Spending so much time on defence and then you finally win the ball back and then (you don't) have any energy to take that risk. We want to do it. We want to play fast when we need to play fast.

"But like I said, once we're … spending so much time in defence. (Our) time in possession, I think that's our worst result for the year. So yeah, I think it was more that we needed to get excited."

One positive for Richmond was the return of captain Toby Nankervis and youngster Taj Hotton, who both played their first games back from injury.

"It's obviously good having them back in and we'll get a couple back in the next few weeks as well," Yze said.