NORTH Melbourne returned to the AFLW winners list yesterday with a hard fought win over GWS.

Speaking post match, North Melbourne coach Darren Crocker called it “a good, messy win” for his side.

“It would have been nice to kick more accurately, to potentially blow the score out a little bit more,” he said. “For a game that I felt we controlled from the outset it was still a really strong win. People probably don’t realise how swirly the wind was throughout the game as well, but I felt we got the game looking like a North game for the most part.”

It was not a flawless performance from North Melbourne, which Crocker acknowledged.

“To GWS’ credit they got a lot of numbers up around the footy,” he said. “They got a lot of numbers back in our D50. Made that last connection piece going inside 50 a little bit more difficult for us but that’s still an evolution for our game, being able to just make more of some of those opportunities when we go inside forward 50.”

On the flipside, GWS coach Cam Bernasconi was trying to find the positives after a frustrating performance from his troops, but the frustration was clear in his voice.

“Once again we’re pretty flat in the rooms after another loss, but once again you can see some improvements in our game,” Bernasconi said.

“We addressed two things during the week around just digging our heels in and competing more in last quarters and I thought we did that today. We came up against a really strong side in North Melbourne, going into the last quarter I thought we competed a lot better than previous weeks, and didn’t concede a lot of goals like we have been, so there was improvement there around our pressure in defence.

“Once again we’ve been leaking some goals, so there were a lot of growths in that part of our game, but we probably just struggled to have deep entries, obviously kick a score, and some contested ball. So we’ll get some learning away from this and just make sure we address it once again and to just improve really quickly.”

Bernasconi was impressed by the determination his side showed against a strong opposition.

“I think the positive was in that we were in an arm wrestle all game and North Melbourne are a really strong side, and we’re on a journey here to just get better and better each week,” he said. “So around the whole game I was impressed where we cracked in, but there’s probably just some times we had some opportunities to play it in our front half a little bit better.

“If we had some deeper entries it means we protect the ground a bit better and then put the pressure back on them. So there’s just some moments we’ll look to address throughout the week but all in all it was a strong arm wrestle today.”