NORTH Melbourne president James Brayshaw will meet with Nathan Buckley in the next 48 hours to discuss the club's vacant senior coaching position.

However, the Kangaroos are not setting a deadline for an answer from the highly sought-after prospect.

"We don't have a specific timeframe on when he'll give his answer," chief executive Eugene Arocca said on Friday. "In the next 48 hours there'll be a meeting and what will flow from that meeting will depend on the content of that meeting.

"We're certainly not putting a deadline on him. All we've said is that we'll meet him before the end of the weekend to try to get a handle on his coaching [intentions].

"From our point of view we just want to know what Nathan wants to do … when he makes that declaration we will be able to decide where we go."

North's preferred answer is obviously 'yes' but Arocca refuted the commonly-held belief that the job is Buckley's for the taking.

"It hasn't been, 'If you want it, you've got it'," he said.

"It's more about, 'What do you want to do?' We haven't made the call on whether he would get the job ahead of anyone else but we need to know if he's in the game or not."

The major obstacle in the Kangaroos' quest for a decision from Buckley is the interest in him from other parties; it may well be in his best interests to hold off on making a commitment until the coaching landscape for next year becomes clearer.

With the Tigers also on the prowl for a new coach, Arocca admitted the club faced a difficult balancing act in both going hard for Buckley's signature and getting the best possible candidate if the Collingwood champion cannot be lured to Arden Street.

"Obviously there'll be a point in time where we simply say, 'Well, we've just got move on otherwise Richmond will get all the cream'," he said.

"We'll have to make that decision whenever that time might be.

"We've started a process, we're not just going to sit on our hands and wait for that answer, but we want to see what that answer is before we finalise our process."

Arocca said the club had received inquiries about the coaching vacancy, but had not invited formal applications like Richmond which is already sifting through a list of possible candidates.

He refused to be drawn on whether Buckley would be required to go through the application process if he indicated a desire to pursue the Roos' coaching job.