Three key leaders at North Melbourne have all used the term "impatient" when forecasting expectation for the season ahead.
President Sonja Hood, captain Nick Larkey and coach Alastair Clarkson all spoke publicly on Friday morning ahead of North Melbourne's season kicking off on Sunday against Port Adelaide.
Coming off six consecutive bottom three finishes, there is a sense of restlessness and expectation among Kangaroos fans in Clarkson's fourth season at the helm.
"Since ‘Clarko' has come on board, the stability part of the club is right," Larkey said on Triple M.
"The players are impatient. We want to prove to the fans there is some promise and genuine improvement. Internally, we felt like we did improve last year as a team, but it didn't equate to the wins we wanted.
"It's hard to keep telling yourself you're improving when you see the win-loss [record]. This year is about building on that again and taking a big leap."
Asked about those comments, Clarkson admitted there was a sense of impatience, but used the Brisbane blueprint to highlight how clubs can improve, despite the increasing difficulty of a full club re-build.
"We've pretty much got to rebuild through the draft but that mechanism is as hard as ever, so we're on our way. We've got some good young players and we're really optimistic about further growth and development we've had over the last three or four months - it's hopefully going to be a group of players that look a little bit better than they were last year and hopefully that leads to some more wins for us," Clarkson said at his weekly press conference.
Coming off a five-win season, there is expectation that this is the season North Melbourne needs to take a significant step forward, but the coach stopped short of using the top 10 as a benchmark.
In an interview with Channel 7 last month, he put September on the radar as a clear ambition but did not entirely express it as the club's measure for success when speaking on Friday.
"Who knows where the spike comes," he said.
"If you look at the scribes eight to ten years ago…there wasn't a person who thought (Brisbane) was going to spike like that. I've seen it happen many times in footy. Now no-one really wants to tip against Brisbane. You just can't see them not winning. But strange things happen in footy and so that's why I'm always reluctant to put a number on anything, because it can happen really, really quickly.
"But what we can't escape is we want to be playing finals footy and we're working our darnedest to get there."
The Kangaroos have a golden opportunity to start the season with a bang, with Port Adelaide, West Coast, Essendon, Carlton and Richmond among their opponents in the first six weeks.
President Sonja Hood used much more conviction in a letter to members on Friday morning about what to expect from the year.
"As we embark on season 2026, that energy is underpinned by a harder edge of expectation," Hood wrote.
"We aren't starting over anymore. The foundations are well and truly laid. We've focused on the ‘build' and ‘process' for long enough. Now the conversation, and critically our performances, must shift."
Clarkson re-iterated the club's focus on defending the ground.
North Melbourne's backline has been an external talking point of the pre-season as the club has emphasised the need to concede fewer goals after leaking the second most points against in 2025.
"We leaked far too many goals last year. We tried to do a hell of a lot of work on this over the summer. Really, you're not going to win too many games of footy if you consistently leak 14-15 goals or more in a game," Clarkson said.
"We've done a lot of work on that and the proof will be in the pudding if that transfers into really good performances for us or we need to continue to put some more work into it."
Clarkson all but confirmed that George Wardlaw would return in Round 2 after a strong session on the track where he integrated well and completed high speed running, while Charlie Spargo was away from the main group as he continues to recover from concussion.
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