St Kilda coach Alan Richardson praised Adelaide’s work rate and strength in the contest after their 29-point win over the Saints on Saturday.

Despite having a good first quarter where the Saints were plus 10 in the contest and had nine scoring shots to three, Richardson said they got outworked from quarter time.

“We started to fumble and they looked much safer in the contest, and the numbers reflected that,” Richardson said.

“It was their numbers in terms of their defenders completely out numbering our forwards, their mids getting back to support.

“It’s been a feature of our play so full credit to Adelaide, they beat us really badly on that play.”

Richardson felt that the Crows’ movement stopped St Kilda’s ability to transition down the field.

“We couldn’t get that down the other end, they were able to reset really aggressively as forwards,” he said.

“[Taylor] Walker was in pretty good form, so I think that at times we were a little bit gun-shy to leave and press up and make the ground smaller, they made the ground big and that worked for them.

“They wanted it more.”

Richardson also praised Adelaide’s defenders, in particular Rory Laird and Brodie Smith.

“If we didn’t mark it, blokes like Laird were moping it up,” Richardson said.

“As every team does, you want to stop the rebound of Laird and Smith in particular and you need blokes that have got speed to get to that.”