Essendon senior coach John Worsfold spoke to the media after the game and this is what he had to say...
Q: Four and one, game in hand. Things are looking pretty good. Can you talk us through that one?
A: Yeah. Look, a good arm wrestle game of footy. We knew it was going to be a contested game. It's a big part of the way North Melbourne play. In the end, we matched them in that area. And probably weren't as clean as we would have liked to have been outside when we got the ball outside and used it going forward, we left a few opportunities out there. But really pleased to come away with a solid win.
Q: How long do you think it took the guys to adapt to the conditions? Because it was pretty sweaty out there, it was like a wet weather game without the wet weather.
A: Yeah, all of our games in the last two or three weeks have been fairly wet. It was fairly wet
last week against Collingwood. So we've played all night games an they have all been fairly dewy and slippery. I wouldn't have thought they would need to adapt too much. It's a hot game and overall I thought in the first half we were pretty good in the contest matching the Kangaroos in that way.
Q: Andrew McGrath, do you think he is getting enough credit this season? He has been pretty great.
A: He is playing his role for the team and developing certainly we're happy with how he's developing. He obviously started as a defender in his first year and played a fair bit of wing time in the next year or so. And now as an inside midfielder he's grabbed the role really quickly and having a bit of an impact for us.
Q: Zaharakis three goals and what were your instructions to him?
A: He's been playing a role that is a little bit new for him and in some of - for some of the way we play, it's a little bit of a new role as well. So we're just trying to put all of that together. That's why we've said a few times over the last month or so that a lot of the stuff we're doing is a little bit of a change on what we've done in the past and we're just going to stick at it, keep believing in it and getting better at it. So I talked about Brayden Ham last week. He's had a couple of games where he's been quiet on a wing but the ball hasn't - we haven't transitioned the ball well away from the contest which has left him out in space but the last couple of weeks he's really showing what he can do when we play the way we're trying to play. Zaharakis is the same. He's been playing a key role for us.
Without getting much of the footy but tonight he got his rewards. His turn.