North Melbourne has re-signed five key players in what club chief executive Eugene Arocca has described as a ringing endorsement of the club's future, but the club is apparently not prepared to make a commitment to veteran pair Nathan Thompson or Shannon Grant.

Michael Firrito and Hamish McIntosh have agreed to three-year deals while Daniel Pratt, Corey Jones and Brady Rawlings have all re-signed for a further two years.

The existing contracts of all five players were due to expire at the end of 2008.

Arocca said the club was keen to lock away several other key players to new agreements in the coming months ahead of the admission of the 17th AFL team from the Gold Coast in 2011.

"We've got a number of key performance indicators we want to achieve, and this is one of the key ones for us, locking away as many players as we can before the end of the year," Arocca said.

"This is the first stage; there'll be a second stage probably within four-to-six weeks … and we hope to make an announcement about another four to five players by then."

Asked whether Thompson and Grant would be among the next wave of re-signings, North Melbourne football operations manager Donald McDonald said: "There's no rush to do anything there".

"Those boys, it's just a matter of them preparing to do their best every week and we'll see what happens at the end of the year."

McIntosh said the negotiating period, who took place before he sustained a posterior cruciate ligament injury that will keep him sidelined until the eve of the finals, had been a difficult time but that he was glad to have committed his future to the Kangaroos and said he expects to be a one-club player.

"You stress about it, I'm a bit of stresser, and it worried me a little bit but I knew the club was going to support me, hopefully, and they've done that," McIntosh said.

"It's great to knock it over and now I can just concentrate on my footy and getting my body right, ready for playing finals at the end of the year."