North Melbourne defender Daniel Pratt says the need to sustain the AFL club's membership and finances are a driving force for the players in the pre-season.

With a very inexperienced playing list, a bottom-four finish last year and an untried coach - Brad Scott - the Kangaroos have been largely written off as finals contenders.

But Pratt said Sunday's upset NAB Cup win over reigning premiers Geelong was partly motivated by a desire to show supporters that there is still cause for excitement.

"It definitely is, we've had a long history with membership drives, trying to push them up as much as we can," Pratt said of a club whose survival has sometimes been threatened by the lack of a large traditional supporter base.

"I think yesterday they got a fantastic opportunity to see what the future is.

"You've got blokes like (Jack) Ziebell, Cruize Garlett, Ed Lower, (Leigh) Adams, I can keep reeling them off, there's so many young guys coming through.

"It would be disappointing if the North supporters wouldn't get behind us now, they got to see a little bit of it yesterday.

"I guess going forward, if we can keep holding our end of the bargain up, it would be good if the supporters could do the same."

But Pratt also acknowledged that while beating the top side was a positive start to Scott's reign, it was difficult to gauge how much of a pointer it would be to their regular season chances.

"It's the first game of the year, Geelong started pretty late compared to everyone else," he said.

"So we're aware of that and going forward from here, you can take some confidence from that, but it's a long season, it's four weeks before round one.

"They'll be up and about come round one and hopefully we're still travelling along nicely."

As well as strong performances from many of the club's youngsters, Pratt said a big gain from Sunday's match was the way players adapted to Scott's gameplan.

He said they had worked hard to employ the key elements of applying full-field defensive pressure and moving the ball faster when in possession.

"We've definitely changed the gameplan a little bit and Brad's brought some stuff to the club which has been fantastic," Pratt said.

"I think the boys have really taken to it well and obviously yesterday things went pretty well.

"The way the game's going now, the rule changes have made the game (faster) as well, so we've got to keep adapting to what they want to do."

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP