Shaun Higgins says North Melbourne will build on its strong second half of the 2015 season.

North bowed out in the Preliminary Final in 2015, on the back of winning seven of its last nine games of the regular season, before impressing in its finals series.

The 27-year-old said he expected the club to take the momentum from those performances into 2016.

“It was a disappointing way to finish the season (in the Preliminary Final), although the second half of the year we can take some real positives out of that,” Higgins told NMFC.com.au.

“We got massive improvement in the group, especially through the younger guys. I’m really confident that we can have a really good year again next year.

“There are no guarantees that we will end up in a Prelim or a Grand Final, but definitely that’s what we are building towards.”

Higgins, who along with Shaun Atley, Jamie Macmillan and Shaun Atley, began his pre-season early, heading to Utah with the club’s first to fourth year players to get a “head start” on their pre-season campaigns.

Speaking after an intense training session in icy conditions at Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park, Higgins said an early start to the season would pay dividends.

“Similar to the other older boys that came along, for me, I wanted to continue to build on the season I had last year. (Having) no (post-season) surgery obviously helped, so I wanted to get a bit of a head start, and a little bit of a jump start on the other boys and head back for a good two week period before Christmas.”