Coach Brenton Sanderson has backed his midfield to respond to an “ugly” showing against Essendon at AAMI Stadium on Friday night.

Adelaide’s onball brigade was soundly beaten in the 35-point loss, with Bomber playmakers Jobe Watson (34 possessions and 1.0), Brent Stanton (26 possessions and 1.0) and Ben Howlett (25 possessions and 4.1) outpointing counterparts Scott Thompson, Patrick Dangerfield, Nathan van Berlo and Matthew Wright. Wright topped the Crows’ possession count with only 23 touches.

Sanderson said his side found itself on the back foot after losing the centre clearances.

“It started in the centre bounce – the numbers there are ugly. They just killed us in centre-bounce clearances,” Sanderson said.

“We had our A-grade boys in there and unfortunately they were beaten in centre bounce stoppages. Most of our midfielders will look at the review this week and say they got beaten head-to-head.

“Essendon did a good job on Patrick Dangerfield. They wore him tight tonight. He copped a couple of big knocks early … but I thought he toughed it out. It was a low-possession night for him, but it wasn’t through lack of trying. He worked his heart out.

“Those boys are proud and are a really good midfield. I’m sure they’ll get an interesting review from their midfield coach this week and they’ll bounce back really hard against Brisbane.”

The Crows committed “uncharacteristic” errors and were unable to generate any fluent ball movement after quarter-time. Sanderson said the Bombers had successfully stopped his team from playing its natural game.

“They held us up pretty well. We couldn’t get any run going. We normally attack through the middle of the ground, but they forced us wide and we kicked the ball out of bounds on the full too often,” he said.

“We only had about 60 marks and we normally average 80. They forced us back behind the mark a lot and we ended up kicking it long to a contest, which is okay in moderation, but it happened too much.

“At times, we looked stagnant in the forward line. We didn’t quite have our usual run and excitement. They were pretty well held. We didn’t help our forwards with our ball use though.

“We play our best footy when we’re dynamic and take the game on … that wasn’t there tonight. Maybe we have to be a bit more daring at times; risk versus reward. It looked like we were quite stagnant ahead of the ball at times, and didn’t want to take the game on. When things got desperate after half-time, we looked better when we took risks.”

The Crows will now have to wait two weeks to atone for their poor Round One showing. Adelaide will travel to Brisbane in Round Two to take on the in-form Lions.

Sanderson said tackling would be one focus at training in the coming fortnight.

“We couldn’t stick our tackles; they just brushed us aside and we were minus 26 (in the tackle count). We worked on that over the summer, but tonight showed we’ve still got work to do,” he said.

“A 35-point loss is not what you want in Round One. It’s very disappointing for our footy club because we’ve been waiting six months to make amends (for the preliminary final loss), so we’ll have to regroup. We’ve got two weeks now to prepare for Round Two against Brisbane. We’ve got a lot of time to train and look at the tape.

“Hopefully, we get a better performance in two weeks’ time.”