One might think Sunday’s return AFL clash with Adelaide is enough to send a shudder down the spine of North Melbourne coach Brad Scott.

Scott’s men coughed up a five-goal lead in the last quarter of their round-nine meeting with the Crows to lose by one gut-wrenching point at Etihad Stadium.

But Scott has met these challenges before. After all, 10th-placed North have lost five games by under a goal this season.

And he believes his team have learnt a hard-earned lesson about handling momentum shifts against them.

Take last week when North faced Geelong, who finished strongly to beat the Kangaroos by four points in round two.

North turned the tables in round 19, triumphing over the third-placed Cats by 10 points after holding a 20-point advantage at halftime.

For once the Kangaroos (8-10 win-loss) weren’t overtaken after making the early running.

“It has been a few games where we’ve had those concerns,” Scott told reporters on Thursday when asked about the return clash with the Crows.

“The week before against Geelong we could have easily said we had the same things going through our heads.

“But we didn’t focus on that at all.

“We certainly learnt our lessons from last time on the things we did well and the things we did poorly.

“We executed that reasonably well last week.

“We did enough to get ourselves in a winning position against them (Adelaide), so that’s the good, but then we allowed them to score too easily at the end.

“Whilst it was a bitterly disappointing loss, we weren’t sitting here saying ‘gee, we can’t play’.”

Scott said he was pleased the Kangaroos were able to withstand Geelong’s second-half fightback last week.

“What’s been the dramatic change, and it’s only a small thing but it’s a big difference, is that when the momentum shifted on the weekend we were able to counter that,” Scott added.

If fifth-placed Essendon are stripped of premiership points in the coming days following an investigation into their use of supplements, it would give North hope of playing finals if they could win their remaining games against Adelaide (13th) and three top-eight sides.

Scott insisted he wasn’t paying attention to the dramas at Windy Hill.

“Regardless of any other club’s situation, our focus has been on performing really well against good sides,” he said.

“We’ve got Adelaide … and Essendon, Hawthorn, Collingwood to finish.

“That’s occupying all my time. I’ve got enough to worry about with them.

“If we somehow end up in the finals through winning our last four games, our challenge is to make sure we’re playing really good footy so we can make an impact in September.”