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Graham Denholm\/Getty Images via AFL Photos<\/p>\n
A TEAM on an 18-game winning streak does not often find itself scoreless at quarter time, but that was the situation for ladder leaders and raging premiership favourites North Melbourne when the Roos trailed the Bombers, 3.2 (20) to 0.0 (0) after one term on the weekend.<\/p>\n
Fortunately an incredibly strong breeze that advantaged the end the Bombers were kicking to was about to swing in North Melbourne\u2019s favour, with the Kangaroos booting five unanswered goals in the second term, and 10 of the last 13 goals of the match to eventually do what they always do, and just win.<\/p>\n
Roos coach Darren Crocker said the quarter time huddle was \u201cpretty calm\u201d with no one panicking, and the side reassessing before going out and grabbing the four points, 10.11 (71) to 6.5 (41).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hadn\u2019t been in that situation for a long time, so it was actually going to be really interesting to see what the group how they felt, and how they responded at that particular moment,\u201d Crocker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew the conditions were tricky and that Essendon had the advantage with the wind with the first quarter, but it was really good for our players and our group to just have a reset and go \u2018okay that quarter\u2019s gone now, what do we have to do now to get the game looking more like a North game? and what do we need to do to respond?\u201d and I thought in the second quarter they responded really, really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crocker praised the Bombers\u2019 pressure which was rated at around 2.4 \u2013 considered elite \u2013 while the Roos were slightly down on their output and not quite playing the formidable football that everyone has come to known from the blue and white stripes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did strangle us a little bit around the contest, there was a lot of bobbling ball, like missed handball, tackle, missed handball,\u201d Crocker said. \u201cSo the game wasn\u2019t really breaking open, the ability to go from inside to out, and again I think the tricky conditions probably contributed to that as well, but at the same time they got the ball forward and looked dangerous as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo Essendon\u2019s credit, they made it a really hard-fought contest right throughout the whole game and they probably at times the game looked like they wanted it to look and they were taking some of the aspects of how we want the game to look and what we do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
North Melbourne had to adjust to a few defensive actions put in play by the Bombers, including a tag on Ash Riddell<\/a>, defensive forward role on Emma Kearney<\/a>, and looking to limit the impact of Irish talent Blaithin Bogue<\/a> who had been in great form.<\/p>\n \u201cThey planned really well, they obviously had some thoughts around trying to take away a couple of in particular the impact of certain players, and that\u2019s where the beauty of our group is then others stand up and those players all fought through those situations,\u201d Crocker said. \u201cI still felt like Emma Kearney still had an impact, Ash Riddell and Blaithin as well, and then others responded and lifted around that.\u201d<\/p>\n North Melbourne ended up having 28 more disposals, 11 more clearances and 13 more inside 50s during the match, while turning the first term game around to also win the contested possessions (130-118) and uncontested possessions (146-129) while eight of the Roos\u2019 27 marks came inside 50.<\/p>\n The Roos face off against sixth placed Sydney Swans next week who are looking to snap a three-game losing streak after starting the year at 4-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cCalm\u201d Roos get to work after slow start Peter Williams Graham Denholm\/Getty Images via AFL Photos A TEAM…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,74478,64,63,55,639,56963,52767,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-176161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-ash-riddell","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-australian-football-league","13":"tag-australianfootballleague","14":"tag-blaithin-bogue","15":"tag-emma-kearney","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}