AFL 2024: North Melbourne to use nightmare Magpies loss as motivation

North Melbourne ruckman Tristan Xerri says the Kangaroos will “forget” their nightmare one-point loss to Collingwood and be fiercely motivated to tackle Melbourne on Saturday night.

Xerri said the Roos drew plenty of positives from the first three quarters of last week’s defeat and would try to reproduce the same brand of football against the Demons, but would not be hung up on the result against the Magpies.

North Melbourne’s 54-point lead early in the third term was the second-largest an opposition side as overcome in the club’s history, and the league’s seventh-biggest comeback of all time.

“I think I can speak on behalf of everyone – that’s the footy we want to play, especially in the first three quarters,” Xerri said.

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“Obviously it was disappointing not to finish the game off as we’d have liked, but if we can put ourselves in those positions we’re going to give ourselves a chance to win more games.

“I think initially you saw after the game on the weekend everyone was a bit flat, everyone was exhausted, a bit upset, but we’ve slowly moved on.

“Footy’s good like that, you get a new game every week, so you forget from the weekend gone and look to the week to come, and that’s the positive about it – we’ve got another chance to rectify it this week.”

Xerri, 25, is in the frame for All-Australian squad selection alongside Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy after a brilliant first half of the season, already playing more games (13) than any previous season.

He said he was highly motivated to take down Gawn on Saturday night as the Melbourne captain prepares to shoulder a heavy on-ball burden without injured superstar Christian Petracca.

“He’s in some terrific form, isn’t he? I’m really looking forward to the battle, hopefully I can continue playing some good footy and come away with the win,” Xerri said.

Important Kangaroos midfielders Jy Simpkin (left) and Luke Davies-Uniacke are both under fitness clouds ahead of the clash with Melbourne on Saturday night. Michael Klein Credit: News Corp Australia

“I’m not too sure really (how to beat him), I’ll just go in with my game plan. He’s just so good in all aspects – around the ground, and the contest – I’ll go through it with Monky (ruck coach Damian Monkhorst) and try and come up with a plan.

“Like we touched on earlier, I’ve just got to bring high effort and intensity, and hopefully it works.”

Xerri said he would continue to wear a helmet after adopting the headgear following a nasty blow to his face during a January training session which required surgery.

“I didn’t actually play juniors with it – I had an incident in the pre-season where I sort of broke my face a bit,” he said.

“Not that a helmet would’ve (prevented) it but I thought I’d give it a crack and as long as it didn’t annoy me, I thought why not just keep it?

“I get hit in the head a fair bit during the game, so if that helps a little bit, why not.”