NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott has called for his players to put aside their disappointment of not making finals and send retiring veteran Brady Rawlings off with a win on Sunday.

The twilight clash with Richmond was rendered a dead rubber after the Kangaroos' heavy defeat at the hands of St Kilda last week, but Scott said Rawlings' stature at the club demanded a winning finale.

"It's a massive game. We've got our superstars in Brent Harvey and these types of players who are revered around the place, but Brady is revered because he largely reflects how we want to be seen as a footy club," Scott said from Aegis Park on Thursday.

"He's extremely capable, but extremely humble at the same time.

"The players will be desperate to get the right result for Brady on the weekend."

Click here to view Brad Scott's press conference on YouTube

Regardless of the result, it won't be the send off Scott had hoped to give Rawlings, who will retire at the age of 30 having played 245 games for the club.

The Roos had a chance to sneak into the finals if they had won their last two games, but those hopes were dashed in no uncertain terms by the Saints, who recorded a 65-point win.

Scott's team will finish his second season in charge "nowhere near" the mark he had planned for and the coach already has an eye on a third campaign next year.

"We're certainly lacking polish, there's no doubt about that, so that's something that will be a key focus of our pre-season," he said.

"You look back on a season with disappointment if you're not playing in finals, but we'll analyse it really closely and that will direct and drive our pre-season.

"If we can add that polish then we're confident that 2012 is going to be a really exciting one for us."

Scott said the club would not be afraid to be an active player in trade week to achieve that goal.

"You're always looking to improve your list and we sit ninth on the ladder at the moment and it's clearly not good enough," he said.

"We'll be looking at anything we can to improve our list. We're not in a situation where we're just going to sit idle and hope we improve.

"We're going to be really aggressive and really ruthless to ensure that we improve from 2012 and beyond. What opportunities will present themselves? We'll have to wait and see, but we're certainly not going to be sitting idle during that period."

Ruckman Hamish McIntosh will play his first game of the season at the weekend with his prolonged absence from the line-up, after recovering from dual Achilles heel operations, fuelling trade speculation.

However, Scott said the ruckman did not form part of his aggressive trade period strategy.

"We're absolutely committed to Hamish, Hamish is committed to us and the only way that would change is if Hamish or his management came to us and said that he wanted to move on," he said.

"I've said regularly that people can speculate, but they barely scratch the surface.

"They look at your very best side and ask the question, 'Can they all work together?' but they don't dig as deeply as our list managers do.

"We need four ruckmen on our list. Will they definitely play in our best 22 each week for the next five years? Who knows? One thing I do know is we need four ruckmen on our list."

Key forward Aaron Black will make his AFL debut for the Kangaroos after overcoming the injury issues that have plagued him since he was taken 25th overall at the 2009 NAB AFL Draft.