He finished runner up in the club’s best and fairest after a career year, but Brad Scott says North would have been irresponsible to keep Levi Greenwood from leaving Arden Street because of an aggressive post season bidding war.

In the last year of a three year contact, the midfielder played his best footy throughout the season and received much off-field attention according to the head coach.

“…as Levi kept improving, obviously other clubs got involved and some of the offers that were put to Levi… (If we were to match them) would have just completely distorted our salary cap,” Scott told SEN’s Morning Glory program.

“An extension of one year was offered to him and quite early in the year by our list management committee and Levi’s footy just went through the roof, he kept getting better and better and better.

Scott says North worked diligently to improve its offer to Greenwood as the year progressed but the club wouldn’t compromise its overall list management.

“The scope and the length and the financial considerations of that contract was increased throughout the year...We understand the competitive nature of footy these days and we would have loved to have retained Levi but with the number of inside midfielders we’ve got on our list and certainly the TTP (total player payments) structure that’s in place…to match the offers from the Bulldogs and Collingwood would have been irresponsible in the
end.”

While losing a player of Greenwood’s calibre wasn’t ideal, Scott says the Roos are blessed with depth all over the ground.

The forward line in particular is bursting at the seams with quality players.

“It’s good to have selection dilemmas and if you’ve got every one of our key forwards up and going, someone is going to miss out.”

The addition of Jarrad Waite along with the likes of Ben Brown, Aaron Black, Mason Wood, Majak Daw and Robbie Tarrant means the coach can answer a question he often gets asked about finding a replacement for Drew Petrie when he eventually hangs up the boots.

“Hopefully North supporters can actually see the succession plan in place.

“We’ve got some great options now.”