Todd Goldstein says North Melbourne's loss to Geelong on Saturday was an opportunity missed.
The Roos looked to be right in the game when Goldstein reduced the margin to 10 points early in the final term, but Geelong surged home.
“It’s always hurts when you let a team run over you in a final quarter like that,” the ruckman told The Herald Sun’s Glenn McFarlane.
“Any game we lose is hard to take, but the positive outlook is that we did give ourselves opportunities.
“On another day we go inside 50, take some of those opportunities and it’s a different game we’re looking at.”
Despite the margin blowing out somewhat, the teams both had 51 inside 50s.
“It’s hard to look back on it without properly reviewing it, but we were getting inside 50, just not effectively,” Goldstein said.
One of the factors that could have taken its toll, was the different dimensions of GMBHA Stadium, which is much longer and narrower than Etihad Stadium.
“It is different and difficult in terms of how you play the ground, we had a number of out of bounds on the full,” Goldstein said.
“In the end, there are four posts at either end and it doesn’t change the way we play our game too much.”
North Melbourne will now enter a break, having a bye in Round 13, before facing the Western Bulldogs in Round 14.
Goldstein believes the group is in a good place heading into the bye.
“Everyone is feeling pretty good, and we can go into the break looking back at a really positive first half of the year,” he said.
“It’s a much better feeling than at this point last year when we had given up a few close games, and with our young group there’s a still a bit we need to learn and get better at.”
