NORTH Melbourne coach David Noble is well aware it wasn’t pretty, but says the Roos’ 15-point win over a brave, undermanned Eagles outfit at Marvel Stadium on Sunday will do wonders for his young group.
Facing a vastly different West Coast line-up to the one that pushed Gold Coast a week ago (the Eagles made 14 changes, mainly due to health and safety protocols, and were without many of their stars), Noble admitted the Roos “needed to win this game”.
And although West Coast pushed them right to the line, Noble believes the margin is “irrelevant”, insisting every victory is hugely important to his side, which, prior to Sunday’s clash, had tasted success just 17 times from its past 62 matches.
“It’s been 2019 since we’ve had a win here… and for our fans to finally get back, see us have a win, albeit not a pretty one, but four points on the board is not only important for our fans to come and celebrate with us, but also important nourishment for our players, we shouldn’t underestimate the fact that we won today and our players get a sense of having to grind a game out,” he said.
“Whether or not we should have or shouldn’t have won by more is irrelevant, we won the game.
“The challenge for us was to play at a level that we felt we needed to to come away with the game.
“We were in front for all but a small portion of the game.
“We were reasonably satisfied with some of the areas we hit today.”
Noble is well aware North will need to go up a gear if they are to cause a huge upset in Brisbane against the Lions on Saturday night.
“They’ve established that as a fortress up there over the last three or four years, they’ve only lost a handful of games, I think, at home,” he explained.
“It’s a challenge, we’ll have to recover, get ourselves back, see where a couple of injured guys are and reset ourselves to go up there.”
KANGAROOS v EAGLES Full match coverage and stats
The Roos will be without Luke Davies-Uniacke, whose head hit the turf after a Willie Rioli tackle, while Tarryn Thomas is in doubt for the trip north.
“Not sure about Taz (Thomas), I’m not sure where that sits, I haven’t had an update yet from our medicos yet, but certainly Luke will follow the (12-day) protocols,” Noble said.
Noble confirmed Thomas was sent to hospital during Sunday’s game, while Kyron Hayden, who was a late out, missed with gastro.
Adam Simpson, meanwhile, was full of praise for the Eagles, but felt his side had their chances to come away with what would have been an almighty upset.
“We’re disappointed we didn’t win. We came here to win,” Simpson said.
“Absolutely (I’m proud).
“Synergy, belief, system, all that stuff was a challenge, but it looked pretty connected to us. We could have won that, absolutely.
“There were moments where we looked quite vulnerable, as is to be expected but there were moments where we looked quite dominant.”
At 0-2, Simpson is hopeful he will get a number of key personnel back for the round three Derby against Fremantle, which will take place on Sunday at Optus Stadium.
“It wasn’t like we hadn’t done it before. It’s not ideal, though, it’s not what we want. We’re not going to succeed if we continue to do this,” he said.
“We need to work our way through it, take some positives, keep working on what we want to do well… we’ve got Freo next week.
