After North Melbourne’s clear and obvious progression over the course of the season so far, the club is finally on the winners list after a comeback victory against Hawthorn.

From difficult defeats to the Port Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs, to nearly moments against Melbourne and Collingwood, Saturday’s determined win is just reward for an improving side.

With North recently passing the milestone of 40,000 members, the win comes at the perfect time for a club so obviously on the right track both on and off the field.

“I’m really pleased for a range of people, particularly our members and our fans for hanging in there … as we’ve progressively gotten better,” Noble said.

“It’s terrific for everyone involved at the club … [the] fans can see where we’re going … it all seemed to fit and line up … it was a gutsy win and it’s what I’d like our team to stand for.

“We’ve loved their (the fans) support … they’ve been nothing but strong in their support and understanding of where we’re going and this one is for them.”

North’s midfield trio of Jy Simpkin, Ben Cunnington and Luke Davies-Uniacke put together a performance for the ages against Hawthorn, taking their contested games to the next level to dominate the likes of Tom Mitchell and Jaeger O’Meara.

The trio finished with a combined 99 disposals, 37 clearances and 64 contested possessions, putting the Hawks’ midfield to the sword with their grit and determination to be first to the football.

With Simpkin playing arguably the best game of his career, Noble says the structure of the midfield allowed him to break free of his shackles and put the team on his back when it needed him to most.

“They got their structures right, the roles they shape to do … the outcome was for Jy to have that sort of game,” he said.

“[It’s] all relevant to the structure you’re able to put in place at those points in time.

“It was his turn today, a couple of weeks ago it was probably ‘Cunners’, so well done to him. He’s been working on his game pretty hard.”

When North went into quarter time over four goals down the naysayers were out in force, believing North would once again fall agonisingly short of victory.

Noble says his side’s discipline improved over the course of the game, and that coupled with minor tactical tweaks set the platform for the comeback win.

“We felt we hurt ourselves with some of our turnovers … we’ve been chasing wins in certain areas of our game which haven’t necessarily correlated with the scoreboard which has been disappointing and frustrating internally,” he said.

“I think one of the things we went back and looked at was the structure we went and looked at before the game, and that hadn’t really changed.

“Then we tinkered a bit with our forward end to make it a little bit more contested higher up the ground. Apart from that we felt we were in and around the contest pretty well for most of it.”