ARGUABLY no current North Melbourne player better represents the famous Shinboner spirit than the relentlessly hard-running midfield dynamo Brent Harvey.

At 172 centimetres, Harvey is, officially, the shortest man in the AFL. But that has not stopped him from becoming one of the league's elite.

The three-time club best and fairest and three-time All-Australian has not only defied the trend towards taller, bigger bodies that has overtaken the league since he debuted 14 years ago, he has done so with remarkable success.

The man they call Boomer has figured highly in the past two Brownlow counts and is now stepping into the role that, when he arrived, was filled by one of the game's greatest players — Wayne Carey — as captain of North Melbourne Football Club.

Speaking after an eventful off-season in which his club was returned to its members after 24 years of private ownership and has begun transforming its run-down Arden Street Oval home into a facility that will put it on a par with the big Melbourne clubs, Harvey told The Age this week that he was pleased with his club's present and excited about its future.

That is why he believes it is time to break from the past — or, more particularly, to put to rest the constant equation of his club's success with the mythical Shinboner spirit.

"Our hat gets hung on the hook that says the Shinboners all the time," Harvey said. "When we win by two or three points it's always a Shinboner game, no one really talks about our experience and the excitement that we've got at the footy club."

It is this message that Harvey wants to get out about his football club: that it is young, strong and has a bright future; no longer the AFL's perennial struggler, always ready for a scrap, with a foot planted irretrievably in the past.

"That's the thing that I really want to drive," he said. "It's not about our backs against the wall all the time, because it's not. We're getting the new facility built, financially we're going fine off the field, our membership was great last year, so I want to drive the fact that we've got young players coming through that are exciting and talented footballers, and when we win it's because of that, not because we all put in and came from behind again."

While some would find Harvey's determination to shed the Shinboner tag almost sacrilegious, the new skipper is adamant he will not be forsaking the club's legacy.

"We'll never forget our history and where we've come from — that's a huge part of our footy club," he said.

The events of the past week have served only to galvanise Harvey's vision of his club's new direction. On Monday morning, after more than a decade of wrangling about funding and planning issues, work finally began on transforming the Arden Street Oval from the shabby emblem of North Melbourne's ongoing struggle for survival to a $16 million, first-class facility that will reinforce the club's message that it is determined to remain a Melbourne-based club for good.

It's a development that Harvey said all of the players have been following closely.

"As I said to (club president) James Brayshaw the other day, the boys just want to see something happen and once that happens we'll be that excited because we'll know it's going ahead and that happened (on Monday) morning, so there's a good vibe around the footy club at the minute," he said.

Harvey is also excited about the youth that has come into the club over the past few years. Having lost Shannon Grant, Leigh Brown, Jess Sinclair and Nathan Thompson at the end of last season, Harvey said the time has come for those young players to step up and fill the shoes of those who came before them.

"We've lost probably 800 games of experience," Harvey said. "But I always see it as, one door closes, another one opens, so blokes like Lachie Hansen and Ben Ross and these type of guys now get an opportunity, and if they grab it, it's going to be exciting."

While all of these developments have Harvey excited about the future the recent drink-driving incident with forward Aaron Edwards created a sombre present.

Harvey was quick to talk with Edwards about the $5000 fine and suspension handed him by the club and intent on ensuring all players know that sort of behaviour was unacceptable.

"We've got some new standards with where we want to go, so it's very important for the young guys who have come into the footy club, who have been there for two or three months, to realise that that's not what we're about at the North Melbourne footy club," he said. "The way we go about it is a lot more professional than that."