NORTH Melbourne continued its winning ways to start season 2024 after defeating Richmond by 12 points in Tasmania.

Speaking to the media post match, Kangaroos coach Darren Crocker shared his thoughts on his side’s start to the season, noting that he was “really happy with the start.”

“The first three weeks was always going to be quite a tough fixture for us, based on results from last season and we got through that period,” he said.

“We knew coming into this condensed fixture being able to manage the players and get them up three games in eight days was going to be really important to keep them fresh, take the learnings out of each game but move on very quickly.

“The players have been exemplary with how they’ve applied themselves in this period and the staff have done a terrific job in being able to give the information that they need and have the confidence to be able to apply on game day.”

After North Melbourne started to take the momentum in the second quarter, Crocker shared that his message to his troops at half time was pretty simple.

“There’s wasn’t really a structure shift, but most of it was a reset at half time,” he said. “It was a good opportunity to reset at half time, spoke about the halves pretty much gone, it’s even and Richmond were a point up at that stage.

“One of the learnings that we can take out of the first half was what were we actually doing when the game looked like a North Melbourne wet weather game and when we went away from that.

“I thought in the second half the players were able to execute that really well.”

Joining her coach for the post match media chat, star midfielder Mia King spoke about playing in the tricky conditions and backing up in tight schedule time for games.

“I think the compressed fixture was always going to be a bit of a test, but like Crock said we’ve got such a great team behind us, high performance staff that have set out a really good program for us,” she said.

“A lot of the girls felt pretty good heading into today. We’ve been managed really well. We used the wet weather footy, our last few games have been in the rain. It was great to get the four points today.”