CONFUSION is the overriding emotion felt by North Melbourne midfielder Nick Dal Santo after the club's 23-point loss to Carlton at Etihad Stadium on Friday night.
The sixth-placed Roos fell to 14th-placed Carlton in a disappointing effort, coming just two weeks after they beat the third-placed Hawthorn at the same venue by 20 points.
The loss continued North's mystifying inconsistent run of form and Dal Santo said his club's performance on Friday night left him at a loss.
"It was just bitter disappointment and anger, not at each other because it's hard to assess it straight after a game," Dal Santo told SEN on Saturday morning.
"The other thing with me was a little bit of confusion – as in where to from here and what do we do, not with our performance, just with our inconsistency?
"It's a tough business and you are going to lose them at some stage, but I just feel like our losses throughout the whole season have been nowhere near how we want to play our footy.
"And that's the confusing part. What more can we do, the leaders included, to perform more consistently more regularly?"
Dal Santo said the Roos needed to work out a way to fix their problems to avoid being finals discards.
"I believe that come September you can't have that inconsistency or wondering where you are as a playing group," he said.
"We need to be more definite in how we play."
The 30-year-old has had his critics for the way he has performed at certain stages this season, in particular in the team's losses, and Dal Santo said some of the commentary was fair.
Dal Santo said it was up to him and the club's leaders to show their inexperienced teammates the way.
"There's times where I'm laconical. There's times where I have mental lapses and I make mistakes and over the last few weeks I've cost us goals by making poor decisions and not helping out the team when I need to and I accept that and that's something I need to work on," Dal Santo said.
"There's times where I need to do more for the team. But coming into a new club, with the majority of the guys being early to mid 20s, I think there's things as leaders we need to do to make a difference."
