NORTH Melbourne stormed past Hawthorn for the second successive week, overcoming a highly contested and heavy defensively-focused game to knock off the brown and gold by 39 points and reach another AFL Women’s Preliminary Final. The Roos made it 25 straight wins and 27 games undefeated with no sign of slowing down after the 5.12 (42) to 0.3 (3) result at Ikon Park.

While inaccuracy did plague the Roos, North Melbourne coach Darren Crocker said there were a number of elements that the side would “look at” in a bid to improve for the next match in a fortnight.

“Their (Hawthorn’s) ability to defend and not just defend inside the d50, but also put pressure on the actual ball carrier so sometimes the ball carrier was under pressure that then meant that they couldn’t get the ball in the areas they wanted to,” Crocker said. “But they did also get some good numbers back as well. We could have been a little bit better with where we put the ball for our forwards at times.”

The Roos coach said the tactics the Hawks employed – which included adding extra numbers behind the ball or around the stoppages challenged the Roos “pretty heavily”, but the faith the players have in the system and patience they continue to show, was rewarded in the end.

“They did a couple of things that made it difficult for us, but in saying that, also we were really pleased with the fact that they were going to find it very hard to score with what they were doing,” Crocker said. “That’s full credit again to our players, they realised that teams will throw a different look at us and whether that’s bringing numbers around the contest, whether that’s dropping numbers behind the ball.

“But that’s fine we’ve played in enough of those games now to know how we can work through it, we just have to be patient, no panic sets into the group, we just keep going about our footy we know that we need to and I think the scoreline tonight, they kicked three behinds and we still had 17 shots. A little bit inaccurate tonight, but for three quarters it was pretty tight.”

The win was just another tick for the club that has hardly looked challenged throughout the course of the season, and Crocker credited the entire playing group and the program as a whole with staying focused and measured as each game passed.

“It’s been a pretty calm and measured way we go about things,” Crocker said. “We don’t really don’t overly excited about the real highs, and we don’t go too deep with the lows. We pretty much keep it on an even keel and we come together, we look at what we do well, we look at areas we can continue to learn from and grow from, and the players have bought into the way that we go about it and the way we set up the weeks.”

Two players who missed out on the game were Eilish Sheerin and Mia King, with the former almost certainly right to play in the preliminary final, while the latter will be a wait and see.

“[Eilish] was very close to being able to be available for tonight, but we thought if we could get through tonight then she’d be able to get two full weeks of training under her belt, whereas she was probably going to be a little lean coming into this game,” Crocker said. “Then Mia is progressing well, but we’ll just see how she can get through the next couple of weeks as well.”

Without a bye during the season, North Melbourne earned the week off to await the winner of Melbourne and Adelaide in two weeks’ time. For the Roos, it meant being able to take a breather and reset for the penultimate weekend.

“We’ve been fortunate in a number of games where we’ve been able to look after some players which has been good,” Crocker said. “Now that we’ve got the week off, we’ll continue to train and get out of the training what we need to, but we’ve been here and done that before, so the next two weeks will be really important. The girls recover well, we’ll come together, we’ll probably have a little hitout next Saturday morning and then into another week before the prelim.”