DANNY Daly is central to North Melbourne's knowledge of its opponents, briefing his fellow coaches and players in the lead-up to each game.

This week North (4-10) meets Hawthorn (6-8) at Aurora Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

Do you consider that even though you're not in winning form, you should carry a psychological edge?
Absolutely. Over the last couple of weeks and even a few weeks before when Dean was there, we've been playing some pretty good footy. Psychologically, there's a fair bit of pressure on the Hawks from within their own playing group, their skipper, their supporters and the president. It's a situation for us just to go out there and keep working on the things we've been doing. We've spent a fair bit of time this week on the opposition and how they've been going and their last few weeks.

What about the pain of round three where a lot of things just didn't go right for North – in the game or in the build-up?
It was a terrible week for the club, the players and the game, unfortunately. There were a lot of emotions in that week as everyone understands. Physically and mentally it drained a fair few of our players. As much as we tried to make the boys prepare as normal, it was just impossible to do that. It was a really challenging week for us and it showed on the day.

Do you emphasise the rivalry between the two clubs?
In my opposition meeting on Thursday I brought up the history of the two sides, the great clashes we've had, the premierships we've won against them and the premierships they've won against us. In round three there was a bit of warfare between the two sides on the day and a few words spoken out there by a few Hawthorn boys as well. It certainly has been spoken about a fair bit.

Thinking of last week, it seemed as though there was a big improvement with your entries inside 50. Corey Jones and David Hale were able to find some form.
They were. Unfortunately, Haley couldn't put them between the big sticks. The pleasing part from Haley's point of view was that he took 10 marks and worked really well with Jonesy. I know Darren Bewick's doing a lot of work with Jonesy, Lachie Hansen and Haley on restructuring, resetting and working together. Haley got some confidence up and hopefully if they can put some scoreboard pressure on by kicking goals, it makes it a lot easier.

Josh Gibson proved again that he's capable of shut-down jobs and it was a fairly aerobic one for him. You'd have to use him on Lance Franklin this week though.
We'll play him on Franklin. He's got a pretty good history against Franklin, who's probably only averaged two or three goals against him. Scotty Thompson will be given another crack at (Jarryd) Roughead.

What's the likelihood of Sam Power playing, with Sam Mitchell, Brad Sewell, Xavier Ellis and Chance Bateman all needing attention?
One of the things we've missed in the last couple of weeks is Sam's ability to shut down players. He's been really good for us in the last 18 months. If someone's got away from us during a game, we can chuck Sammy Power on him. Last week we saw (Jarrad) McVeigh and (Ryan) O'Keefe start to get a bit of the footy. The week before (Nathan) Eagleton and (Daniel) Giansiracusa got hold of us. Sam's had the ability to be able to do that as well as win his own footy. In the games we've won, he's averaged four inside 50s and we've scored from three of those. He plays an important role.

What about Luke Hodge, especially if he sets up at centre half-back?
We've got a couple of things in place for that. Unfortunately, Ed Lower's probably a week or two away from playing again but he's been able to do a job as a shut-down forward. There's a fair chance he (Hodge) might spend a bit more time in the midfield this week. There's a fair bit of pressure on their leaders to come out and really make an impact early on. We need to be cautious of that.

It was an interesting, perhaps ineffective role for Drew Petrie last week. Will you tinker with that?
Drew struggled with the role last week. It was a bit different from the week before and there were a lot of things playing on his mind about his role and what he should and shouldn't be doing. As a match committee, we probably made that a little bit hard for him. We've taken a step back on that this week and he'll play a more conservative role.

Aurora's a fairly big ground. How has that affected your planning?
We've spoken about that a fair bit in terms of how Hawthorn plays there and their ability to run on the 45s (degree angles) and get out wide and launch from that part of the ground into their key forwards. We need to think about how to counteract that and how we need to play that ground. It's a bit different from the ground we played on last week in terms of size. Our defenders, midfielders and mid-forwards are just going to have to work hard, try to spread really well and get involved as much as they can in our corridor but also wider out on the ground. I actually had our opposition meeting out on the ground at Arden Street on Thursday, rather than indoors, and tried to let the players know exactly how much different it was and how much space there is if you add another 30 metres onto it. That was to give them a bit of an idea of what we're going to be up against.

You'd want to avoid six straight losses at all costs.
Absolutely. When you look at our game plan, not too much has actually changed in the last two weeks from where we were going with Dean. The one thing we've been doing is taking the game on a little bit more. What we haven't been able to do is stop the opposition from getting it inside 50 as much as we'd like to and, in turn, getting it inside 50 ourselves. We've kept working with the players this week with their efficiency and ball movement patterns and trying to remain positive. We probably haven't trained as long as we had in the previous two weeks. We found we were training too long on Thursday, which might have hampered our ability to run out games. As a whole, the match committee and the players know we're only an inch or two away from putting it all together and getting a win. I reckon we're a pretty good chance this week of doing that.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.