Adelaide have been hit by a swine flu scare on the eve of their AFL round 12 match against North Melbourne.

Young onballer Richard Douglas reported symptoms of the flu on Friday and was withdrawn from the side to play the Kangaroos on Saturday morning, being placed in quarantine pending the results of testing.

Douglas' housemate Tony Armstrong, who had been listed among the three Adelaide emergencies, was also taken out of the firing line as the Crows sought to keep the flu out of their ranks given the tendency of bugs to spread like wildfire through a football club.

Jared Petrenko has replaced Douglas in the Adelaide 22 while Robert Shirley and Myke Cooke have been added to the emergency list.

"Dougy has the symptoms of the flu and, as part of the process that everyone is going through at the moment, anyone that is living in the same quarters -which in this case is Tony - has to be kept out of harm's way," Crows football operations manager John Reid told the AFL website on Saturday.

"We don't know whether it's swine flu at this stage.

"It may well not be, but you've got to make sure.

"Dougy only got the symptoms (on Friday) and he hasn't been amongst any of the players since.

"It's only when you start showing the symptoms that you're able to spread it.

"We've got 24-36 hours to find out whether it's the flu or anything worse than that."

The scare is poorly timed for Adelaide, since very little has looked like stopping the Crows over the past three weeks.

Their rejuvenated attack has looked particularly dangerous, while Douglas was emerging as a useful cog in midfield and kicked one of the most freakish goals of the season in round 11 against Essendon, an audacious checkside effort from the "wrong" pocket.

Crows coach Neil Craig said his men needed to be wary of the spirit of North Melbourne, as evidenced by a stirring start against St Kilda last week that was only curtailed by a spate of mid-match injuries.

"It'll be their spirit (that's the biggest threat), their competitive spirit," Craig said.

"They've got a lot of new players coming through their football club at the moment, but they're still playing with great spirit, and just have a look at the first quarter against St Kilda.

"People are saying St Kilda and Geelong are the two runaway sides in the comp and we all pretty much accept that - just look at their performance in the first quarter when they had a full side and were up and running, absolutely outstanding."

The Kangaroos are still counting the cost of that match, with Matt Campbell (hamstring), Daniel Wells (hip/groin), Sam Wright (knee) and Ben Warren (fractured cheekbone) all unavailable.

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