Thursday night’s clash against Richmond at Metricon Stadium can’t come quick enough for the SUNS with experienced forward Alex Sexton saying his side will treat the short turnaround as a positive.

The SUNS fell nine points short against North Melbourne in Hobart on Saturday and face just a five-day spell before their next test against the defending premiers on home turf.

Admitting the squad were extremely disappointed with the weekend’s result, Sexton says the SUNS are eyeing the chance to bounce back quickly on Thursday.

“We’ve got five days and we get to do it again – we have to see that as a positive,” Sexton said.

“We’re chasing consistency, we don’t want to be a side that’s on and off. It’s a good thing that it [the defeat against North Melbourne] hurts, there’s a few boys that are really feeling this one.

“We’ve got five days to bounce back and that’s what we’re focused on.”

The SUNS weren’t quite able to claw their way back into the contest in a tense final quarter at Blundstone Arena but will take some positives from the fixture.

The SUNS bossed the tackle count, breezing past its 2021 season average and showed patches of the strong, contested side they want to be.

Tackling machine Hugh Greenwood, who leads the league in that statistic, made a game-high 11 tackles with several season-high tallies for his teammates as well.

“We knew the contested side of their (North Melbourne’s) game is always there, they’re a tough unit and have shown that over a good period no,” Sexton added.

“They’re a contested side and that’s what we want to be. We showed in areas that we can go with the best in that area, obviously there is a bit in terms of execution we need to keep working on, and we’ll have to look at that back on the Coast this week.”