North Melbourne must ‘take the game on’ if it wants to continue to beat the best this season according to Leigh Adams. With his milestone 100th game coming on Saturday night against Geelong, Adams is urging his team-mates to run at the Cats without fear.

“I think when we’ve played the top teams, we know we have to take them on otherwise they’re gonna hurt us on the way back…” he told SEN on Friday.

“…and maybe we’ve gone into our shell a little bit against the lesser teams that have knocked us off and thought that it (a win) might ‘just happen’ a little bit.”

PRESS PLAY above to listen to Adams' full interview on SEN

While the Roos have beaten the top teams in Sydney, Hawthorn, Fremantle and Port Adelaide, losses against Brisbane, Carlton, Gold Coast and Adelaide were unexpected and surprising to many.

Adams believes the way they attack the game from the first bounce is vital to securing the four points when the final siren sounds.

“I think we play our best footy when we’re taking the opposition on, when we’ve got the footy and we’re just pulling the trigger on the first kick…” Adams added.

“We’re looking to bring our best foot forward this week to really match it with them, they’re playing some good footy at the moment Geelong.”

Adams says the Roos need to get better at quickly identifying when players are down on form.

“In the last few weeks when we have been down, we’ve changed it but it’s been too late in the last quarters… we’ve started to take the game on when we probably needed to identify it in the first quarter and change things.

“It’s such a close competition at the moment and if you’re just a little bit off, three or four blokes are just a little bit off, it just effects the whole team, so it’s pretty tough to identify when there’s just a couple of blokes off.”

Adams, 26, played his first game in 2007 and has taken eight seasons to notch up 100 games due to wretched run with injury and a chicken-wing tackle.