Kangaroos ready to make Hawks earn finals berth

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Kangaroos ready to make Hawks earn finals berth

North Melbourne are determined to make Hawthorn earn their finals berth as the Kangaroos attempt to end their AFL season on a high.

The Kangaroos close their season against the seventh-placed Hawks, who need to win to seal their top-eight spot, in Launceston on Saturday.

But Clarkson wouldn’t be drawn on the suggestion the season’s end would be sweeter if they could ruin his former club’s party.

“There’s no greater incentive to try and win this game than there was last week against the Dogs,” he said.

“We’re just trying to really focus on the things that we can control, and if we perform the way that we want to perform, then we’ll make it difficult for any side that we’re playing against.

“And we did that pretty well for the second half of the year, except for two games in particular, against Sydney and the Western Bulldogs.

“We’re hoping that we can just rectify things a little bit better to make Hawthorn really, really earn their spot in September, if they can get over the line.”

Both teams will send off retiring triple-premiership Hawk and now North Melbourne veteran Liam Shiels, who Clarkson hailed and confirmed would remain at Arden St in a development/recruiting role.

North won’t risk Harry Sheezel (ankle), while Clarkson confirmed out-of-favour journeyman Hugh Greenwood was also retiring.

Clarkson took “enormous hope” from how, apart from tough losses to the Western Bulldogs and Sydney, North had taken it up to teams in the second half of the season.

“Our fan base, I think, is seeing some of the emergence of our talent and the way that we want to play,” he said.

“But where we are as a footy club, we need another summer, and we need another probably full season of playing 23 games of footy against really competitive opposition to continue to grow.

“We’ve got the youngest list in the competition, and the most inexperienced list of the competition, so we just know that hard yards have to be done, that (they) are still ahead of us.

“That’s exciting, but at the same time a little bit daunting, because (I) just wish it could all happen right now.”

Clarkson noted he and football boss Todd Viney had similar experiences at previous clubs.

“We just know the hard yards need to be done, and you can only really start making significant progress once you’ve put significant building blocks in place,” he said.

“We feel like that’s been done, but there’s a lag before it actually turns into success.

“We’ve seen that right across the competition for a long ******* of time where we’re hoping that we’ll bounce for some wins pretty soon.”

Clarkson joked he wouldn’t be so “forthright” in naming players he wanted to chase after publicly targeting Jack Viney before the midfielder re-signed at Melbourne.

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