Having played in four finals series since arriving at the end of 2008, Jack Ziebell wants more.

“We made back-to-back preliminary finals in 2014 and 2015, so that’s definitely a highlight of my career,” Ziebell told the AFLPA's Captain's Call podcast.

“Playing finals and winning finals is the best feeling you can have as a footballer. I couldn’t imagine the feeling of playing in, or winning a Grand Final, and that’s what we’re all here to do, so hopefully we get that opportunity sooner rather than later.

“As of this stage in my career, playing in those games against Essendon, Geelong and Richmond all at the MCG in front of 65,000 and upwards of 90,000 people and winning those games, was just the best feeling possible.

“That’s why you front up week in and out week out, to try and replicate that feeling and get that opportunity to get back there again, which is outstanding.”

In those two consecutive seasons when North made it to preliminary finals, it went in as underdogs.

Three years on, the club finds itself in a similar position; widely underrated.

“Both years we made prelims we finished seventh and eighth, so we weren’t given a chance to make the second week of finals let alone the third,” he said.

“Both years we just rode a wave of emotion. One year we came from 30 or 40 points down to win the first final, and after the game, the

feelings you have are all worth it. When you get to a prelim, you’re only one win away from a Grand Final ... but it is something you don’t really think about until after the game whether you’ve won or lost, and we’d lost.

“You just scratch your head and wonder what it would have been like if we won that game. One year Sydney belted us in a prelim, so we probably weren’t a chance to win that game.

“The year after, we played West Coast over there and we were up 30-odd points halfway through the second quarter and we were a chance, but got rolled. That one hurt a lot more because I felt we had a team that year that could have really challenged win the flag. To get so close and think you’re one win away from the chance to achieve the holy grail of football was very heartbreaking, but it does make you quite hungry to get back there.”

The 27-year-old is the seventh-oldest player on the second-youngest list in the competition, and doesn’t have the veteran experience he had around him in those two seasons.

However, that won’t stop him from pushing himself and his teammates in the pursuit of finals footy.

“With the current position our footy club is in at the moment, with the position of the list and some of the guys who have exited over the past year or two, it just makes us senior guys a little bit more hungry to get these younger guys up to scratch quicker, and try and get back there as soon as possible because we know what that feeling’s like when you get there,” he added.