Forward Tom Lynch has diverted some of the praise for Adelaide’s scoring power to its improving team defence.

Heavy scoring early in the season was offset by leaking inside 50s at the other end but in recent games the Crows have been better at squeezing the opposition.

On Saturday night, West Coast did not score in the final term and struggled to move the ball past the middle of Subiaco Oval as the Crows dominated clearances and possession. The Eagles had only 35 inside 50s for the game.

“In the last month, especially, we have been very good in being able to restrict teams with their inside-50s,” Lynch said after returning from the weekend’s successful trip to Perth.

“Against some of the good teams we have played this year we have probably leaked too many inside-50s. That is a bit to do with the whole team defence, so that is an area we have to keep looking to improve on.

“If we display a strong effort with that, as you saw against West Coast we are going to get the results we are after.”

After 12 rounds Adelaide is the highest scoring side in the AFL averaging, 113.5 points. It also has had the highest average score against (88.8) of the sides in the top eight.

“Our attack certainly stems for our defence … and our defence (on Saturday night) was super, particularly in setting up that wall making it very hard for West Coast to get through,” said Lynch, who again played an important role linking plays in gathering 23 possessions and ten marks.

“Re-entries (to the forward-50) come from that defence. At lot of credit has to go to the midfielders and defenders.”

Lynch said the 29-point win over the Eagles – after trailing by 26 points midway through the third term - was one of the best wins he had played in with the Crows.

“We always have that belief that we can score and score quickly. But the way the last quarter played out (on Saturday) night — you probably did not see that coming.

“Once we had momentum, we got rolling. We’ve been working pretty hard in making sure we finish out the games.”