North Melbourne coach Brad Scott admits his AFL side needs results quickly before team morale becomes too difficult to manage.

The Kangaroos are 0-3 from a tough opening draw and next up is Sunday's clash with Richmond at Etihad Stadium.

While Scott said the team was better than at this point last year, it was still not enough and he was working overtime to keep a positive vibe at the club.

"It's difficult," Scott said. "It's a fact that when you're not winning, players can get down on themselves.

"They listen to what's on TV and read what's in the papers and it's hard to keep them up, but we've got to keep reverting to what we think are the facts and keep working on those things.

"The only way we can turn around morale is from some results - and we've got to start getting those results pretty soon."

He is confident of improvement in key areas such as basic kicking skills, which let North down in last week's loss to Fremantle.

"The facts are we're zero-three so that is a challenge but what we do in situations like this is look really closely at the facts," Scott said.

"We look at the indicators in games that we take a lot of stock in and they could be better, but they're not terrible.

"Morale can take a hit when you haven't won a game yet, but we've just got to keep looking at the facts and keep improving on those things and we're really confident results will come if we fix those areas.

"I'm confident that a lot of things we've worked on we've improved in but they haven't been good enough to win us games yet."

Scott said North had enough chances against all three sides they have played, moving the ball inside the opposition's 50m mark around 50 times in each match.

"We're getting the ball in there, we're giving ourselves an opportunity where we're winning the ball in and around the contest - we're just not efficient enough with our ball use," he added.

Scott also contended that North's run of outs needed to be kept in perspective.

"We've played three games and those three games have been Fremantle in Perth, West Coast in Perth and the reigning premier off a six-day break.

"If you space those out throughout the year we would always have said we would have to be on our game to win those."

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