Richmond coach Adem Yze labelled his side's performance against North Melbourne on Sunday as "frustrating".

The Tigers struggled to get into a rhythm, falling to the Kangaroos, 10.13 (73) to 6.12 (48).

"It was just a really frustrating game," Yze said.

"Starting the game with allowing 48 uncontested marks or whatever it was in the first quarter, sort of set the tone for what the game was going to be.

"And obviously it was a plan for them to try to deny our pressure. We were trying to make adjustments, we felt we got it better for the rest of the game, but it's just not up to standard."

The Tigers were kept to three goals for the first three quarters, something that Yze put down to his team's energy levels.

"I think it was energy. We used all of our energy on defence and in our execution on offence, it was affected by it," Yze said.

"Spending so much time on defence and then you finally win the ball back and then (you don't) have any energy to take that risk. We want to do it. We want to play fast when we need to play fast.

"But like I said, once we're...spending so much time in defence. (Our) time in possession, I think that's our worst result for the year. So yeah, I think it was more that we needed to get excited."

One positive for Richmond was the return of captain Toby Nankervis and youngster Taj Hotton, who both played their first games back from injury.

"It's obviously good having them back in and we'll get a couple back in the next few weeks as well," Yze said.