Wales went down 26-30 to the Wallabies in an absorbing Test match at the Millennium Stadium, Ewen McKenzie’s side outscoring Warren Gatland’s men by three tries to two.
Efforts from Christian Leali’ifano, Israel Folau and Joe Tomane proved decisive for the Wallabies and Wales were indebted to North for keeping them in the game.
The Northampton wing opened the scoring with just minutes on the clock after capitalising on Adam Ashley-Cooper’s failure to collect his chip ahead. And when he was moved to centre in the second half following an injury to Owen Williams, he had a similar impact by crashing through for another score.
“I was happy with my performance but there are always things to work on from a personal point of view,” said North.
“It’s always good to get a bit more experience in a new position and I’m always happy to be on the pitch for Wales.
“I think we may have come off the gas a bit and we need to be more clinical when we have sides on the ropes.”
Wales came up against a clinical Australia side with playmakers Quade Cooper and Israel Folau in fine form. Flanker Michael Hooper also experienced a good day at the office at the breakdown.
North admitted: “Cooper was outstanding. It was a massive achievement for him to get his 50th cap, he played really well.
“He was a massive ball player for them. It was difficult but to be the best you have to play against them as much as you can.”
With the autumn campaign done and dusted for another year, attentions return to regional and club duty with European action taking place this weekend.
But with the New Year and the Six Nations not too far away, North already has one eye on the trophy Wales have won for the last two years.
“From our point of view, we want to show we can compete with the top three teams in the world,” he said.
“To defend the Six Nations title, we have to go at it like we finished this campaign. If we hit the same tempo and the same accuracy we have then I’m pretty sure we can retain our title.
“We’ve showed we are competing well, there’s just that little edge we haven’t quite got yet. When we turn it on we can perform very well as we did against Argentina and Tonga but we’ve got to knuckle down now and push on.”
