Drew Petrie has followed up his AFL All-Australian form of last year with a slow start to 2012, but North Melbourne are showing little concern.
Petrie appears way off track in a bid to reproduce his 48-goal season of 2011, after kicking only nine goals in the opening six rounds.
One of his better performances came in a goalless effort as a decoy against Geelong’s Harry Taylor in round three, sacrificing his own game to take the former All-Australian defender up the ground as the Kangaroos scored an upset win.
Petrie booted three majors against winless Gold Coast.
But the former North Ballarat junior had only one shot at goal in last week’s loss to West Coast.
It’s hard to see 10th-placed Kangaroos making the finals for the first time since 2008 if the 197cm Petrie isn’t kicking goals, leaving too much responsibility on the shoulders of Aaron Edwards who has booted an impressive 15.4.
North assistant coach Darren Crocker on Wednesday praised Petrie’s work-rate.
“Perhaps he hasn’t been taking the marks that we all expect him to take and hit the scoreboard as much as we’d like,” Crocker said.
“Drew knows he’s not in the best of form but he’ll keep working hard to turn that around, because he is a pro.
“So sometimes we look at key forwards and their output has to be marks and hitting the scoreboard, but there’s also a lot of other things they do that perhaps go unnoticed.”
Petrie, 29, is ranked equal sixth in the competition for contested marks (12) after finishing third (49) last year.
If the Kangaroos (3-3) are to launch an assault on the top eight, Sunday’s clash at Etihad Stadium with the Western Bulldogs (2-4) should present a highly-winnable contest.
Crocker says the Bulldogs showed some solid form in last week’s 21-point loss to Collingwood.
“A lot of their better players are getting back into some good form,” he said.
One of those star players is two-time All-Australian fullback Brian Lake, who could pose a major headache for Edwards or Petrie.
“Brian Lake, he did an extremely good job on Travis Cloke, I’ll give him that,” Crocker said.
“We’re going to make sure that he has his hands full at some stage.”
The Kangaroos last week opted against recalling Todd Goldstein to partner Hamish McIntosh, but Crocker says the two-ruckmen policy is still on the table and worked well against Geelong.
