Five painful lessons learnt last year have helped North Melbourne to a thrilling two-point win over the Western Bulldogs that could prove vital to their AFL finals chances.
The Kangaroos suffered five gut-wrenching losses by less than a goal as they slumped to 15th at the end of the 2017 season.
It looked like that fate was set to befall them once again when the Bulldogs hit the front with about two minutes remaining at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night.
But the Roos seized on a half-chance offered when Mitch Wallis kicked the ball out on the full going inside his own forward 50 with less than a minute left.
In the blink of an eye, North whisked the ball into their own attacking 50 where a Ben Brown toe poke set up Jack Ziebell’s winner with 20 seconds remaining.
“We were on the wrong end of quite a few of those (results) last year,” North coach Brad Scott said after the stunning 12.5 (77) to 11.9 (75) win in front of 26,301 fans.
“They’re really painful at the time but you learn from them and then train it and it’s great for the players to be on the right side of one of those really close games when it looked like it had slipped away from us.
” … the good players throughout history love the big moments. We had a couple of players in the big moments that stood up.”
North were eighth with a 7-5 record heading into round 14 and an upset loss to the 14th-placed Dogs would have seen them lose valuable ground to fellow finals aspirants Hawthorn (ninth) and GWS (10th).
Such close wins without being in top form have proved invaluable for teams over the years when the whips are cracking in the race for a finals berth.
“I can’t say right now where it sits,” Scott said.
“There are always games you look back on throughout the year saying ‘Gee, we weren’t super in that particular game but we found a way to win’.
“I thought the Dogs were really good. They really challenged us.
” … It’s not that we were poor, it was they were good and we had to respond.”
Ben Jacobs was a late withdrawal with concussion symptoms.
Billy Hartung replaced him but didn’t reappear in the second half after sustaining a hamstring injury.