Jasmine Ferguson's name is one that often flies under the radar on gameday, but the lockdown key defender continues to execute her role efficiently in the royal blue and white with a team-first mindset.

Now in her second season at Arden Street, the 23-year-old is taking everything in her stride.

"I think my second season has been a pretty good one … the first one is very overwhelming, you just kind of go week by week without appreciating everything that you're doing," Ferguson told North Media.

"This season I've had a couple of games where I've been a little bit quiet, but I just kept going back to Zac (Read, backline coach) and 'Crock' (senior coach Darren Crocker) to talk about my role, and my role is to play on the most dangerous forward or the bigger forward that week and let people like 'Wrighty' (Sarah Wright), Brooke (Brown), 'Kearns' (Emma Kearney) and 'Flash' (Nicole Bresnehan) drive our offence.

"For me personally, this season it was going back to 'what's my role' and 'what can I do every week to help the team' and on the weekend (against Collingwood) it was one of my better games and it was nice to have that reward after playing my role."

Ferguson gathered eight disposals and laid six tackles in the 32-point Round 9 victory over the Pies, and managed to keep forward Sabrina Frederick, who kicked two goals against Fremantle the week before, off the scoresheet completely.

A massive contest against a Richmond side that has won seven straight games awaits the Kangaroos this weekend though, but Ferguson believes her side is poised to clinch another four points.

"We're feeling pretty up and about, I think the game on the weekend gave us a lot of confidence to continue on and finish off the home and away season," Ferguson said.

"Early on in the season we were having wins, and losses as well, but we weren't playing the way we wanted to, whereas in the second half of the season it's all come together with our ball movement, team defence and everything like that."

The Tigers outfit is another in the long line of premiership contenders North Melbourne has faced in Season 7 but having been put up against quality teams each week is something that Ferguson considers beneficial in the build-up to finals.

"At the start of the season when we saw our fixture we knew it was going to be a hard one, but then we just had to switch our mentality to thinking that it's going to be a good thing," Ferguson said.

"It sets us up quite well for finals and I think in previous years we've been known as the team that can't quite bridge that gap between the top teams like Adelaide, but this season we've not only matched it with them, but we probably could have won some of those games and the confidence in the group this season has been massive from that."

Ferguson also praised the efforts of the defensive unit and touched on the dynamic blend of players she spends most of her time with on gameday.

"The group in the backline has been awesome and in the background we've been training really hard," Ferguson mentioned.

"We've got someone like Dani (Hardiman) who is pushing us on and off track to make us go to that next level.

"We've just gelled as a team, and we have a really good mix of different players.

"We've got 'Wrighty' who's a great interceptor, 'Kearns' and Brooke who can drive the ball, 'Flash' who's an absolute hard nut getting in an under and then 'Rikki' (Erika O'Shea) who I think is one of the fastest players in the League.

"It's a great mix this season which I think we probably missed last season."