I was fairly pleased with the game. I'll give the excuses first:
First legitimate top-four chance we've played, after Richmond, St Kilda (overrated), Essendon, Collingwood and Melbourne.
Early injuries in an already unfit team really hurt.

I thought Adelaide played excellent football. They clearly showed a great awareness of each other, and of the tactics they meant to play. Their ability to create space, most notably from hovering players who suddenly broke into space for a handpass, or from players breaking to the opposite wing when the ball was turned over in the forward line, was excellent. This made applying midfield pressure extremely difficult, but I think we did a reasonable job.

Where our pressure was excellent was at stoppages. The tap-outs were something of the orderof 55-10, and the round-the-ground clearances were 38-22; but, centre breaks were 12-10. It was clear that our ability to choke the centre and keep Adelaide from getting the centre breaks that the ruck and clearance statistics said they should have was exemplary - and it was the serially out-of-favour Adam Bentick (who I think should be selected regularly) who led this charge, as usual. Bench's ability to pressure and tackle in the centre was clear - and it is no coincidence that in the third quarter, when Adelaide scored three quick goals from centre clearances, that Bentick was being rested in the forward line. So, stoppage pressure: big win for us.

The place where Adelaide beat us the most was in the kick-ins. I have never seen a team who understands kick-in tactics better than Adelaide: they were deadly on their own kick-ins and completely smothered our own.

The defence played well. The forwards kicked 11-15, but from the quality of shot they had, that would be about right.

Turnovers continued to dog us. We had three turnovers in our D50 which led to goals, and any turnovers up the ground were very effectively moved by the Crows.

Free kicks in the final quarter completely stifled our ability to move the ball. It reminded me of the first quarter against Essendon in Round 3 last year (the comeback), where we conceded something like 14 frees to 2, and a third quarter against Richmond a while back where the count was 15-1. You only get 15 or so I50s each quarter, so if you're giving away this many frees, that cancels most of them, and hands several to the opposition. Give away free kicks like that, and it is impossible to win a quarter, so the fact that we lost the quarter only 4 goals to 2 is actually a good result - both of those other examples saw us lose quarters by at least six goals. I'm not arguing about the validity of the free kicks; they were pretty much all there. The two off-the-ball ones (shepherd against Grigg and holding against Simpson) were real killers.

In a game which Adelaide had the midfield capacity to destroy us, we kept it tight for most of the game. Kudos to us. Next week, against a most likely Kerr-less West Coast, I will be bitterly disappointed if we lose.