North Melbourne’s leaders have echoed the thoughts of coach Rhyce Shaw, pointing to the team’s effort in the contest as its biggest downfall on Saturday night.

After a promising start, albeit while struggling to hit the scoreboard, the Roos succumbed to a dominant Geelong midfield brigade after half-time.

“It’s extremely disappointing,” Shaun Higgins said after the game.

“That sort of performance is unacceptable.”

“After half-time we really fell away in the contest and they gave us a bit of a lesson to be honest,” captain Jack Ziebell added.

“It’s very disappointing that result.”

Geelong dominated clearances around the ground, leading to a +28 differential for inside 50s and ultimately, a 55-point win.

Quite simply, the Cats’ on-ballers gave their forwards more opportunities to score.

“It’s a pretty simple game at times; when you’re losing the contest really badly, the opposition are putting the ball inside their forward 50, and our defenders are under the pump,” Ziebell added.

“We couldn’t win the contest and put it inside our forward 50, hence the reason we could barely score.”

Higgins said the performance will be, “strongly reviewed”.

“We got beaten around the ball and we didn’t look like transitioning inside forward 50. It felt like they (the Cats) got their game going … they worked harder than us through the midfield,” he said.

“Good learnings for us, but we don’t want learnings with a performance like that.

“Let it hurt, but also know that come Monday, Tuesday, we need to get going again.”

The North players desperate to make amends against Port Adelaide next Saturday night.

“It’s important that we keep morale up and it’s a really important two weeks for our footy club, because we need to bounce back from this and finish the year strong,” Ziebell said.

“It’s not necessarily the outcome in terms of wins … that will take care of itself if we get back to the Shinboner football that we’ve been playing,” Higgins added.