Scott slams Roos
Brad Scott says North Melbourne's attitude in the final 10 minutes of the loss to Port is unacceptable
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NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott has labeled his side's attitude a "disgrace" in its two-point loss to Port Adelaide on Saturday.
The Kangaroos looked to have had the game won halfway through the final quarter, before they gave up a 32-point lead in 17 minutes of madness.
"We're five goals up in the last quarter, our attitude isn't that we want to win by 10, it's…were getting too comfortable and that's a disgrace," Scott said.
"It's the most bewildering game I've been a part of.
"How you can have what seemed to be total control of the game and then be opened up like that over the last 10 minutes? It's really disappointing."
Scott admitted his players failed to deal with the pressure of the situation after Port got a run on in the final quarter, but said they should never have been in the situation to begin with.
"We just didn't handle the pressure well enough; pressure that shouldn't have been there in the first place," he said.
"We got enough supply…60 inside-50s to 42, so just dominated the clearances, dominated most of the game except for just the last 10-15 minutes.
"We pumped the ball inside 50 enough, we defended that really well throughout the game and we weren't capable of handling the pressure.
"It's simply not good enough."
Forward Drew Petrie looked to have led the side to victory, with a wonderful performance in North Melbourne's forward line, booting five goals.
While appreciating Petrie's input, Scott said the side couldn't afford to rely on one or two players to get the job done.
"He looked pretty dangerous early I thought," Scott said.
"He kicked the first goal of the game.
"We're not relying on Drew Petrie and Brent Harvey to win us games of footy because if we're doing that we're not going to consistently be a good side.
"They're players opposition sides target."
The agonising loss saw North Melbourne's record slip to 3-5 and Scott said that if they want to improve and challenge for a finals berth, the side had a lot of work ahead.
"It's completely unacceptable and we'll just go away and deal with it, but there's not any particular area of the game we need to work on, we need to work on every single aspect of the game," he said.
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Harry Thring covers news for AFL.com.au. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_Harry.
