NORTH Melbourne's 68-point win over St Kilda at Etihad Stadium on Sunday was merely a first step in answering the questions raised by its dramatic fadeout loss to Adelaide last week, Roos coach Brad Scott says.

"We've still got a long way to go until we answer the questions that were asked of us last week," Scott said in his post-match press conference on Sunday.

"We took a step towards that today, but I suspect it's going to take us the entire 2013 season to answer that question."

The Roos led by 30 points midway through the last quarter against the Crows, but conceded the last five goals of the match to lose in the dying seconds by one point.

The loss had an almost surreal feel about it coming a week after North had lost to West Coast after the siren by two points, and after earlier heartbreaking losses to Geelong in round two (four points) and to Hawthorn in round five (three points).

Scott questioned the mental toughness of his team after the Crows loss and put the acid on his leadership group to stand up at the Roos' subsequent match review.

The coach was reluctant to say what his main message was to his players before Sunday's game, but said he had been drilling his players to respond better to momentum changes in games.

"We're really working on trying to respond to the game situation of which we failed that examination dismally last week," Scott said.

"There's no doubt we're trying to work on different styles of play at different stages of the game depending on what the opposition are doing because what we've learnt … in the round two game against Geelong, when we were playing really good footy, 40 points up, Geelong changed and we weren't able to respond quick enough. 

"So it's very difficult in quarters to get that done from the coach's box. You need your players to respond. 

"To do that you need to coach it really strongly throughout the week and I thought our boys responded pretty well."

Scott said North's ability to weather an attempted third-quarter comeback by the Saints had in a sense been more pleasing than its dominant first quarter, when the Roos pulverised the Saints 9.7 (61) to 1.0 (6). 

"When you've got (Leigh) Montagna, (Nick) Dal Santo, (David) Armitage, (Jack) Steven, (Ben) McEvoy in the ruck, forwards like (Nick) Riewoldt and (Stephen) Milne, they're quality players, they're elite players in the competition," Scott said.

"We knew they were going to come (at us), it was always going to be how we responded and today we responded well."

Scott did not consciously try to tap into the emotion of Brent Harvey's 350th game and Daniel Wells' 200th game on Sunday, but said North traditionally treated milestone games as "very special" occasions.

"Brent Harvey and Daniel Wells will go down as legends of our football club," Scott said. 

"It was really important that we put in a good performance for them, but likewise that they led from the front and I thought they both did that really well today." 

Scott said he hoped key forward Robbie Tarrant would be available to return from a nerve-related lower leg injury against Gold Coast next round, or after North's round 12 bye.