NORTH Melbourne's pressure-releasing victory over Adelaide on Saturday night will help reinforce the style the Kangaroos want to play, coach Brad Scott says. 

The 12-point win was North's first of the season and came despite it wasting countless chances in front of goal in the opening half.

Through those goalkicking woes, the other constant was the Roos' ability to starve the Crows' forwards of opportunities – a defensive effort that ultimately proved match-winning.

KANGAS GET THE JUMP Full match coverage and stats

"We were really pleased with the way we defended full stop tonight," Scott said.

"To keep a pretty prolific side like Adelaide to 16 inside 50s in the first half (and 36 for the match) was a good effort, although they were able to score a bit too easily a few times on the back of those.

"That's a pretty sustainable style in defence, to play that way, and we've still got some things we'd like to tighten up in terms of defending some transition, but for the most part we did that really well today.

"Up the other end, we generated enough shots but couldn't convert a lot of them."

Inclusions Jed Anderson, Paul Ahern, Mason Wood and Cameron Zurhaar all made a difference, with the latter combining with Kayne Turner and Tarryn Thomas to lay 15 tackles.

A tweak to the way North Melbourne brought the ball inside 50 helped those small forwards make a larger imprint, according to Scott.

Wood covered the ground well and was strong aerially, but most importantly provided better support for spearhead Ben Brown, who responded with four critical goals.

WATCH Brad Scott's full post-match media conference

Ahern racked up five contested possessions and three clearances to quarter-time, while Anderson finished with a game-high seven clearances in a terrific return.

"When Jed Anderson's around the ball, the opposition knows that," Scott said.

"He's a really important part of the way we want to play and we set the challenge for all our midfielders to rise to his level, so we have missed him in the early rounds of the year."

Scott spoke about seeing good signs in his team's performance after the round three loss to Hawthorn last week, but knew a win was badly needed.

"It's a relief, because the pressure builds on everyone," he said.

"That's just natural, because it's an intense competition and you don't want the competition to get too far away from you either – but the competition's pretty tight.

"There's going to be a lot to play out in terms of 2019. The challenge for us, while it's probably easy to say, is to keep building the style of footy we want to play.

"We saw glimpses of it in round two, we saw patches of it in round three, but we had a more complete performance and better consistency of effort over four quarters tonight."

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