The veteran forward has withdrawn from his regular weekly commitments at Fox Sports and radio station RSN along with his Fairfax Media agreement in the belief he will be better able to focus on his football.

Struggling for the best part of two months with the delicate reality of working as a regular football commentator while playing below expectations, 11 days ago Petrie held two hours of talks with his manager Shane Casley and reached the conclusion he would walk away from "media street" until the end of the 2016 season.

Petrie honoured a scheduled appearance on Channel Nine's The Footy Show last Wednesday before informing the Nine Network he would also not be available for that program again this season.

Both the Kangaroos and Casley stressed that Petrie's decision to narrow his focus to football was his alone and not influenced by the club.

"He's really keen to finish off the year as best he can and help North go into the finals as best he can," Casley said. "He's been a bit disappointed with his performances and he wants to help his club try to win a grand final this year.

"He's such a professional. He just wants to do all that he can to help the side."

Seemingly guaranteed a third straight finals appearance, the Kangaroos have fallen from the top of the AFL ladder to eighth position with five straight losses. Petrie's form slump can be traced back to round nine against Carlton. Apart from a solid performance against Hawthorn, the 300-gamer has scored just seven goals in the past eight weeks.

"His form doesn't suggest to keep him in," Wayne Carey said on Triple M on Sunday. "...There's some tough decisions that he [Brad Scott] is going to have to make and I'm a Drew Petrie fan ... but he has to make a tough decision to do with Drew.

"His numbers are the worst since 2005, his numbers are worse than Travis Cloke when he got dropped."

Should Petrie retire at the end of 2016, he is expected to remain in football and continue commenting on the game. His Fox Sports News role was a weekly appearance on AFL Tonight, along with the RSN radio role and semi-regular columns in The Age.