It’s hard to describe the feeling of losing a preliminary final.

It’s a mixture of emotions: sadness, despair, anger and disappointment.

But, overwhelmingly, it’s a feeling of emptiness.

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I slumped to the ground and cried in the moments following our loss to West Coast last year – it was the second time in as many years we’d stumbled at the final hurdle.

The previous year, it was Sydney that beat us to a berth in the Grand Final.

My partner, Hester, remembers being unable to console me in the change rooms underneath the stands at Domain Stadium in Perth.

“It was almost as though you weren’t present in the moment,” she said.

Being so close to featuring in the biggest day on the football calendar, but falling short, is tough to bear.

We had the chance to go one step further and to reap the rewards of countless hours of pre-season training, gruelling running sessions, punishment in the gym and an exhaustive home and away fixture, by winning a flag.

The only thing we strive for, as a team, is to win a premiership.

When that opportunity slips away, it’s hard to know what to do.

When that final siren sounds to signal the end of your year as a club, an empty void remains.

After our loss to the Eagles, coach Brad Scott urged us all to remember the bitter disappointment of the defeat and let it drive us through the next pre-season.

It hasn’t been spoken about since.

But, none of us have forgotten and I, for one, draw on those memories for extra motivation when I need it.

After knocking on the door of a Grand Final but being shut out, we sat down as a group and vowed to find an extra one or two percent’s worth of improvement to try and get the edge over our opposition for the following year.

Our first taste of pre-season was an icy training camp in Utah in November, followed by blistering 40-plus-degree summer days in Melbourne.

After hours of skill-based sessions, we’d have to endure brutal tackling and grappling drills with mixed martial arts master, John Donehue, and lung-bursting running with strength and conditioning coach, Jona Segal.

This marked my first full pre-season, having been unable to train properly in my first two years at Arden Street as a result of injuries.

When you’re in the middle of a pre-season, it’s easy to get carried away with how well the team seems to be going.

But if there was any indication we were getting ahead of ourselves, Brad would step in with a timely reminder.

During one of our meetings, he made the point that all teams think they’re travelling well in January, because “nobody has lost a game yet”.

Fast-forward to week four of the season proper and we’re sitting at 4-0.

It’s our best start as a club for some time, but the lid is firmly on.

We are well aware that we’re in the middle of a marathon, not a sprint, and there are still 18 games to play – not including finals, if we make it.

While we are certainly pleased to be on top of the ladder, we are far from satisfied.

We’re well aware the hard work is still ahead of us.

This is as open a season as any and the quality of our competition is incredible, and constantly improving.

Our football world is fickle and there’s no place for complacency – particularly if you know what awaits if you’re not quite good enough to win when it matters.

At age 37, Brent Harvey is the only player in our team to have played in a premiership.

And if it’s anything near as good as he describes, it’s worth doing everything in our power to experience winning one.

We want to avoid having that empty feeling again.

Ben Brown has played 37 AFL games, including six finals, for North Melbourne since making his debut in 2014. He has kicked 58 goals for the Kangaroos. He will write on football for The New Daily in 2016.