Adelaide Assistant Coach Burns is confident the Crows have enough depth to cover the loss of defender Nick Murray.

Murray, who had played every game so far this year, was involved in a heavy collision during the loss to Geelong on Sunday and he now fell under the AFL’s concussion protocol.

Speaking to the media on Monday, Burns would not get drawn into who would be brought into the side to replace Murray but said it would likely be an “intense” discussion for the match committee.

“We are not going to highlight one player today because there’s options there for us and we’ll go through that,” Burns said.

“That discussion will be pretty intense, probably, in the next day or two.

“He’s (Murray) good, he copped a knock and is a bit frustrated, obviously.

“He knew what was going on but he’s under the protocols now, but it should only be the one game that he misses.”

The Crows showed strong signs against the Cats, including a fast start and a fightback which cut the margin back to just two goals with about five minutes remaining in the game.

Burns said Adelaide’s form so far this season proved there had been improvement over the past 12 months.

But there was still lots to work on to match it with the best teams.

“There’s a lot of things we did quite well,” Burns said.

“On their home deck, they play that ground very, very well, and they just sort of had us at arm’s reach for most of the game.

“We started really well early, and we should’ve capitalised a little bit more in the first 20 minutes, but we didn’t.

“It shows us if we want to be a top team in this League, there’s still a few little steps to make (and) I think everyone can see there’s improvement from the past 12-18 months.”

Adelaide players returned home from Geelong on Saturday night and Burns said recovery would be the focus for the next few days, before turning their attention to the game against St Kilda.

“(It’s about) recovery as much as anything, we’ll make sure we do that over the next two to three days,” Burns said.

“We’re playing a team (St Kilda) that’s been fantastic over the first eight weeks, they are the best defence team in the comp, very hard to score against.

“They bring a great contest and they can certainly hurt you when they go forward.

“We know it’s going to be a challenge, but we need to do a bit of repair work with ourselves over the next three to four days, just to get a little bit of electricity back in our legs and look a bit sharper, so we’ll be making sure we do that so we’ll be ready for Sunday’s game.”