Western Australia skipper Marcus North admits he couldn't stand to watch, fearing his side had thrown the game away, before No.11 Michael Hogan sealed their one-wicket Sheffield Shield victory over Queensland.
Having dominated the previous three days and cleaned up the Bulls for 151 in their second dig, the Warriors went within a hair of blowing a 68-run chase and missing the chance to make up ground on the competition leaders.
Showing palpable relief having fallen on the right side of what had become a 50/50 equation, North praised the Queensland effort in making a fight of what should have been a foregone conclusion.
"For a while there I thought we were going to throw the game away. But credit to Queensland they showed some great character, and you'd expect that from a team that was undefeated," said North.
"Allie McDermott was outstanding. To get seven wickets and bowl like he did under that pressure is a credit to him and shows where his cricket is going."
"When you lose a couple of earlier wickets in those funny little short run chases... they got on a roll, put us under a lot of pressure and the next minute you're seven or eight down, and you just sneak over."
"To be honest, I didn't see any of (the last period). I was hiding up behind the players' viewing room in a tunnel there."
"I was only aware of what was happening through the crowd's response, but I must admit I thought't we'd thrown it away and was just thankful to hear the cheers from the teammates when we got over the line."
With the Warriors in good form and in second place, eyeing their first Shield final appearance since winning the competition in 1998-99, North said there was still a genuine disappointment in the close to the contest.
The Warriors had throttled and restricted the Bulls batsmen with tremendous consistency and patience from their bowlers, and their top order had set up the victory with a great platform in their first batting innings 359.
"No doubt we're happy to get the six points, but we're still disappointed with the way we finished that game off," said North.
"If we're serious about playing in the Sheffield Shield final, we've got to be playing a little bit better than that."
"But we've got some encouraging signs. we played really well over the last three days, we had two hours of poor cricket that nearly cost us the game. But that's the way the game is and thankfully we snuck away with the six points."
"Thankfully we've come up here and beaten a very good Bulls side on their own ground... there's another 18 points to get. The fate of our season is in our own hands."
"We've played some good cricket, we should be there towards the end... we're at a good spot, hopefully we can move on, get in some good games and find ourselves in winning positions."