Roos brush off tropical disaster

NORTH Melbourne coach Brad Scott isn’t about to throw the baby out with the tropical monsoonal rain-filled bath water.

The Kangaroos suffered a 16-point Round 1 loss to Gold Coast in Cairns last week, with torrential rain associated with Cyclone Nora making for a dour AFL slog on a waterlogged oval.

It’s going a step too far to suggest North’s season will start again when it takes on St Kilda tomorrow. But Scott will certainly get a clearer picture of where the Roos sit after they’ve performed in the pristine conditions of Etihad Stadium.

“We’ll go back really into the focus that we had pre-season more than taking things out of Round 1,” Scott said.

“We trained all pre-season for more, I suppose, normal footy conditions so we don’t just throw out all of the stuff that we did in the pre-season because of one game.”

Scott admitted his team was outworked by the Suns and will look for improvement in that area against the Saints, who opened their season with a hard-fought win over the Brisbane Lions.

Scott will look to add some height to his defence this week with Majak Daw and Ben McKay jostling for a call-up.

Scott called on Kangaroos supporters to turn up in force as the club looks to cement its hold on the high-profile fixture. The Western Bulldogs were dumped after they won the first-ever AFL match played on the religious holiday last year and the league has made no guarantees there won’t be further changes down the track.

“We fought for decades to play this game,” Scott said. “It’s huge and we want North Melbourne people to really get behind this game and make it a permanent fixture for us.”