CARLTON may have been the only side with a chance at breaking into the top eight to have a win at the weekend, but coach Brett Ratten is concentrating on team development and not a late finals run at Princes Park. 

"There's still that flicker of hope there, but we've sort of found that we need to keep working on all aspects of our game and we've seen some players really grow individually," Ratten said on Wednesday.

"Just to watch individuals really take their games to the next level helps us collectively.

"We always thought this was a real foundation year for us, not just on-field, but off-field as well. Everything that we set up this year was a real foundation for us to make sure that we could sustain success at the Carlton footy club."

Sitting just one game outside the eight, the Blues can still sneak a finals berth if they win all of their remaining matches starting with this weekend's opponent North Melbourne.

The Kangaroos handed Carlton an 82-point hiding when they last met in round 21 of last season, but Ratten was confident this meeting would not be as one-sided.

"We've got players up and going with confidence and belief, that's helped us enormously," he said.

"In round 21 [last year] they were playing finals, we were on the back end, and we gave some players some opportunities to kickstart their careers.

"It will give us a real good insight to see where we're at. We think our confidence is growing and we've been playing some fairly good football over the last month without winning all the games.

"We'll walk away from this game and be able to say 'well we have really improved or we've still got a lot of work to do individually and collectively; it's a great challenge."

In-form midfielder Brent Harvey was awarded three Brownlow votes in that last encounter and Ratten was unsure how his side would tackle the prolific onballer.

"Win, lose or draw he still seems to have the same effect on the game," he said.

"He's very hard to stop and he's someone that we'll spend a bit of time talking about; whether we tag him, whether we let him go or drop off him at certain times.

"What I do know is that when he gets the ball he doesn't waste it and he hits the scoreboard, so he's very dangerous and we'll have to watch him."

Small forward Eddie Betts is a good chance to resume after missing last week's win over Port Adelaide with a hamstring strain.