While much of the focus is always on Lance Franklin whenever there’s talk about the Swans, North Melbourne won’t be so single-minded according to Nathan Grima.

"He's a great player and we know that, but it's not only him we have to watch out for, if one of their other players jumps up and kicks a few goals or stops us playing the way we want to play then that's not going to be good,” he told The Age.

"We have to do what we can do against whoever plays down there, and if we're able to limit the amount of ball that goes in there we're half a chance, so that's what we have to do."

North will take confidence out of beating Sydney in Round 4 and Grima says the players know their best is capable of anything.

"We don't want to make any outlandish comments about what we can do or talk it up, but we know each other well as a whole backline," Grima said.

"That should work for us, and we also know we've beaten Sydney this year and found a way to do it.

"We've beaten every other team that's left now, and I know it's a different ball game at this time of year but you've got to draw on everything you can and we'll take a lot of things from that game against them.

"It's a silly comment, isn't it – what have we got to lose? If we lose we don't get to play in a grand final, so we've got everything to lose, but we'll go in with a mindset of wanting to just have a crack and take it up to them."

Although Franklin will be a focus for the key defenders, so too will a rested Kurt Tippett.

"We'll go through it during the week and work out who lines up on who. But at this time of the year you know you're going to be playing on good forwards no matter which team you're up against.

"If we're able to get past Sydney then Hawthorn also has a good forward line and that's just the reality of it, so do all the other teams.

"We played pretty well against the Swans last time and Scotty (Thompson) played really well on Buddy, but Buddy's a superstar and we're never, ever going to say anything other than that because we don't want egg on our faces.”

Grima believes North will need to address its team defence after Tom Hawkins dominated late in the game on Friday night.

"We're going to have to work on that because when you're up against the good teams you need to have blokes coming in as support and we didn't get a lot of that tonight."