Vice-captain Jack Ziebell believes next season will provide a huge opportunity for North’s emerging stars and says the level of excitement among the players is high.

“With the young guys coming through, I think they’ve got a sense of the opportunity,” Ziebell told NMFC.com.au.

“There’s at least four spots in our senior team next year up for grabs.

“You think of who we’ve got injured last year and playing in the reserves … there’s a lot of guys who think they deserve that spot.

“There’s going to be plenty of competition for those spots during the pre-season. That’s exciting for them (emerging players) and exciting for our team to be able to drive that winning culture a little bit more.”

Ziebell said the players paid little attention to external perception.

“From a player’s perspective and as a leader at the footy club, we’re not settling for anything less than what we expect; that’s to go out every week and expect to win the game.

“We’ve got unflinching belief in what we stand for at North Melbourne, and although we’ve lost four guys, their legacy will remain, which is exciting for us a team. We’ll grow upon that.”

After a career-best season, Ziebell will aim to set the example.

“We’ll make sure the young guys coming through play their role and improve and help us improve as a team. That’s what we expect.”

After winning the first nine games, North won just three more games and Ziebell says the team is well aware of what lies ahead in the pre-season.

“The team needs to improve in a lot of areas to be the best team,” he added.

“Consistency is probably one (area to improve). We started the year well, 9 and 0, and when a few things didn’t go our way through the middle of the year we probably didn’t handle that too well in terms of loss.

“The ability to win games you should and to pinch a couple here and there and keep the consistency levels high is something we need to improve for sure.”