With its back against the wall and a point to prove, West Coast’s experienced team poses as much of as a threat as it ever has.

Losing by a sum total of 147 points across those two games, the Eagles look ripe for the taking as they face up to a resurgent North Melbourne outfit at Optus Stadium, however North Melbourne will be taking nothing for granted.

North has impressed against bona fide premiership contenders the last few weeks, but David Noble says his side is fully aware of what West Coast is capable of.

“There’s an expectation you’d think as a proud club they’re (West Coast) certainly going to come out and want to try and take control of the game early,” Noble said.

“They’ve got a dangerous forward line and a midfield group that can get hold of you pretty quick … we just have to be conscious if they pull it all together then it becomes a pretty dangerous game.

“They sit seventh or eighth for a reason … I’m sure 'Simmo' (Adam Simpson) has been going to work with the players this week just to tinker and tweak a few things, so they’re going to come out ready to play.”

With a wild game of wet weather football expected, this clash could well come down to who makes the best of the impending tough conditions.

Wind and rain are two of football’s great equalisers, with clashes of this nature often coming down to pure heart and grit. The old adage ‘who wants it more’ rings true for wet weather football.

Noble says while the potential conditions have been discussed, North will still try to play its regular game to overcome West Coast.

“Those wet weather games … it comes down to your capacity to do something reasonably basic with the ball,” he said.

“It’ll be a bit more of a contested night … we’ve worked hard on our contested ball, the shape of how that looks and how that leans into our offence and our defence.

“Whilst it might have periods where it’s a bit heavy, there might be other periods where you’re actually able to use the ball in some way, shape or form.

“Now we’ll just have to wait and see what the weather brings and just adapt as we go.”

Teams have often struggled to match up with West Coast’s forward structure this season, with the tall triumvirate of Josh Kennedy, Jack Darling and Oscar Allen causing headaches all season.

With three tall defenders of its own, North look well equipped to deal with the talented trio, with Josh Walker, Ben McKay and Robbie Tarrant all named in the travelling side.

Noble says he believes North’s defence will be up to the task, and it will take a full team effort to stop the ever-dangerous Kennedy.

“We’ve got three talls, so between Ben (McKay), Josh (Walker) and Robbie (Tarrant) there might be times when each of them has a stint [on Kennedy] depending on what their forward structure looks like,” Noble said.

“There’s probably no one that will line up [on Kennedy] initially, we’ll see where they start and where they start to move up the ground and we’ll assess it from there.”