Patrick Dangerfield admits he thought a win over North Melbourne was almost beyond Adelaide when he glanced up at the scoreboard late in the final quarter.

The Crows, who trailed by as many as five goals in the last term, were 23 points behind as the clock ticked into time-on.

Emerging star Sam Kerridge cut the deficit to 17 points with his fifth goal, and an inspirational running goal from Richard Douglas had the visitors within two straight kicks with three minutes remaining.

A brilliant baulk and long kick from Tom Lynch found Kerridge unmarked in the goal square, and the hard-working young Crow coolly slotted his sixth goal with 1:50min on the clock. Adelaide continued to surge.

Jared Petrenko eliminated the chance of a draw when he scored a point from a flying shot at goal off the outside of his boot. With only 20 seconds left in the match, Petrenko found the ball again. He crumbed the ball off a Kerridge long-bomb and soccered through the match-winning goal.

“To be honest, (when I looked at the clock with four minutes to play) I thought ‘it’s going to be bloody tough from here’,” Dangerfield told FIVEaa on Monday morning.

“To the boys’ credit, they just kept coming. We kept attacking and pushing the ball forward.

“Somehow, miraculously, we came away with a victory.”

Dangerfield rejoiced with teammates and the vocal crowd after the emotion-packed final siren. He even planted a kiss on the forehead of reigning Crows Club Champion Scott Thompson.

“It was unbelievable. It felt like a home game for us. I’m not sure how many Crows fans were there, but there seemed to be thousands. It was an amazing feeling,” he said.

“After Pup’s goal, I was jogging back to the centre with Bernie Vince and I was thinking, ‘is this really happening?’ The emotion in the rooms after the game was pretty special.

“It’s a win we’ll remember for a long time.”

Dangerfield praised the influential performance of six-goal hero and housemate, Sam Kerridge.

“Sammy lives with me. We call our house ‘The Performance Centre’. There’s a bit of banter around the Club, and Sammy and I get in to the other boys,” he said with a laugh.

“Sam’s performance was spectacular; 24 possessions and six goals … he’s backing it up week in and week out at the moment. His performance yesterday against a high-quality side was outstanding.”

Dangerfield also singled out the efforts of young ruckman/forward Shaun McKernan, who rucked for most of the second half after lead ruckman Sam Jacobs was subbed out of the game.

“It’s some of the best ruck work Shauny’s done. He might not have necessarily been winning the tap, but he was really competing hard in there,” Dangerfield said.

“He was pushing forward when the ball was in transition and his follow-up work was outstanding. It was important because Todd Goldstein is a quality ruckman.”

The Crows will now prepare to face an in-form Fremantle at AAMI Stadium on Saturday. Tickets are available now at afc.com.au/tickets

Dangerfield said the narrow win over North Melbourne wouldn’t mask the errors that saw Adelaide slip as far behind as 39 points in the second quarter.

“We have to be careful not to get ahead of ourselves. If we’d lost the match, you’d look at the statistics and see we lost a fair few key-performance indicators,” he said.

“We need to improve as a midfield group and once the ball got in our defensive half, we had some poor efforts there, so we still have to review the game quite hard and almost take the win out of it.

“We’ve got a quality opposition and defensive side in Fremantle this week. Their midfield numbers are really good. We have to be better in our centre-bounce work than we were against North Melbourne because we certainly got a touch up in the first half.

“There are areas we need to improve on and improve on quickly, but it promises to be a great game this weekend.”