NORTH Melbourne made a statement in the AFL Women’s Grand Final, thrashing Brisbane to bounce back from the heartbreak of Grand Final day in emphatic fashion.

But according to Roos’ coach Darren Crocker, the fact that Sunday’s match was a grand final replay was not mentioned in the build up.

“Look, and I’ve said this openly during the week, I haven’t mentioned a grand final replay Round 1 against Brisbane once,” Crocker said.

“All that we’ve ever spoken about is the ability to continue to improve, to keep growing as a group, and each day just come in and it’s an opportunity to get better with each day.

“Whether they’ve had that hunger, whether they had that drive, I know they’ve got the drive because they’re showing the drive to get better. But I don’t know whether it was a hunger about beating Brisbane or whatever, when you become the team you want to become, those results just start taking care of themselves.”

However, Crocker was not complaining about his side’s first-up performance.

“Couldn’t ask for much more than that for a first up performance,” he said.

“We felt that our pre season had been really strong. Even the way the players had prepared themselves for the pre season. We didn’t sort of put any demands on them other than to be diligent about sticking to their programs, go away, have a mental freshen up, and then when we hit pre season, let’s hit the ground running, bring energy in, not sap energy out. So it was just nice to see the pre season that we’ve had all come to fruition in Round 1.”

After Brisbane put up a fight in the second term, Crocker’s message to his troops at half-time was straightforward.

“We just spoke about hanging in there, keep on playing the way we want to play, and that there’ll be a point where this game will open up,” Crocker said. ‘As I said, they’re a really robust, high pressure team, very, very strong around the contest, tackle you very, very well, and we just felt that the longer we could hang in there and play our way and match them in those couple of pillars that the game would open up.”

The Roos face Geelong next week, but Crocker said that the Roos will approach this coming week the “same” as in Round 1.

“The players know that we enjoy these moments, enjoy the wins,” her said. “You’ve got to celebrate and enjoy the wins, but we’ll just get to work again, we’ll come in on Tuesday, review this game, look at areas we can improve.

“We had Brisbane up here in the heat for Round 1, we have got Geelong next week and then we got Melbourne out at Casey the third week. So it’s tough start to the fixture, but that’s life. And we just keep going. Keep coming into the club and looking to improve our footy individually and collectively.”