NORTH Melbourne is through to its second consecutive AFL Women’s Grand Final after comfortably defeating Port Adelaide in yesterday’s preliminary final.

Reflecting on the achievement post-match, Kangaroos coach Darren Crocker noted that it is “great for the whole program.”

“It’s been an outstanding season to this point, not to have dropped the game and again today, especially early when the girls really stamped their authority on the game and set it up in the first half,” Crocker said.

“It’s a nice reward again for all the effort that’s gone in throughout the off season and also the season.”

North Melbourne also managed to avoid the slow start that typically comes after a week’s break, skipping out to a 26-point lead at the first change.

“We spoke about it before the game,” Crocker noted.

“I don’t know I even felt like we’d been waiting for a week. “Fair period of time for this game to come along, and they all felt that which tends to send a message that they were pretty eager to get out there and try to put their best foot forward and play our best football, which I thought we did early in the game.”

North Melbourne also had really clean and strong foot skills, which Crocker noted “I think that’s been a real growth in our group.”

“I think that’s why we’re better placed this year, coming into the grand final that there’s been a level of calmness and being considered right throughout the whole year, trying to stay as present as we possibly can, and that was evident again today,” Crocker said.

“Even at half-time, we had a pretty commanding lead at half-time and your head can start to sort of get into the next week. But I thought even though the last quarter we probably got a little bit sloppy, but for the girls to continue to keep the scoreboard ticking over, make it difficult for Port to score was testament of how much we’ve grown this year.”

There was some concern raised about Emma Kearney and her lack of playing minutes in the final quarter, but Crocker put those fears to rest.

“No she’s all good,” he said.

“It was just going to be a matter of how the game was looking and we felt like we had the game under control enough at three quarter time to not have to put her out there and put her under any more duress than we needed to.”