Both Wales and Ireland won their opening Six Nations matches against Italy and Scotland respectively, so one of the teams involved will see their Grand Slam ambitions turn to dust on Saturday afternoon.
North was a try scorer in his last Aviva Stadium outing, the Saints' memorable Heineken Cup win over Leinster in December, and he says that Wales will have to up their game against an Irish outfit that put three tries past the Scots last Sunday.
"Ireland will bring a different challenge," he said. "Of late there have been some great games between us. I think we were structurally OK. We were in the right places at the right times; we just weren't as clinical as we were hoping to be.
"Our last two games against Ireland have been quite special. Notoriously last year we didn't start so well but we came out stronger in the second half. We need to tighten up our game and make sure we're the best we can be on Saturday.
"We've got two teams playing a similar amount of rugby – the firepower and the flair. It's going to be a good game."
Saturday's game kicks off at 2:30pm, with live coverage on the BBC.
WALES TEAM TO PLAY IRELAND
Six Nations
Aviva Stadium
Saturday, February 8th, 2014
Kick off 2:30pm
15 Leigh HALFPENNY (Cardiff Blues)
14 Alex CUTHBERT (Cardiff Blues)
13 Scott WILLIAMS (Scarlets)
12 Jamie ROBERTS (Racing Metro)
11 George NORTH (Northampton Saints)
10 Rhys PRIESTLAND (Scarlets)
9 Mike PHILLIPS (Racing Metro)
1 Gethin JENKINS (Cardiff Blues)
2 Richard HIBBARD (Ospreys)
3 Adam JONES (Ospreys)
4 Andrew COOMBS (Newport Gwent Dragons)
5 Alun WYN JONES (Ospreys)
6 Dan LYDIATE (Racing Metro)
7 Sam WARBURTON (Cardiff Blues)(capt)
8 Taulupe FALETAU (Newport Gwent Dragons)
Replacements
16 Ken OWENS (Scarlets)
17 Paul JAMES (Bath)
18 Rhodri JONES (Scarlets)
19 Jake BALL (Scarlets)
20 Justin TIPURIC (Ospreys)
21 Rhys WEBB (Ospreys)
22 James HOOK (Perpignan)
23 Liam WILLIAMS (Scarlets)
