AFTER being out-tackled 47-73 by Essendon on Friday night at AAMI Stadium, Adelaide's Richard Douglas says his side will get "down and dirty" at training this week.

The Crows missed countless tackles in their round one clash and were comprehensively beaten by 35 points.

Adelaide will review its Friday-night failure on Monday afternoon, but Douglas predicted his side's tackling would be a focus.
"We can tackle, we just didn't do it well," Douglas said.

"The disappointing thing was that when we did miss tackles they resulted in some goals and at important times of the game.

"We'll look at it this week on the track and probably get the gloves off a bit and do a bit of tackling work and get down and dirty."
Despite tackling being a focus over the pre-season, Douglas insisted Adelaide could rectify its issue before it faced the Brisbane Lions in round two.

The main problem with the side's tackling technique, he said, was too many players tried to tackle too high.

"You've got to get lower … teams are very good now at dropping their hips and slipping the tackles," he said.

"There's times last year where we tackled poorly and time when we tackled really well, so you can turn it around."

Douglas denied his side became complacent after it booted the first three goals of the game on Friday to race to a 22-0 midway through the first term.

"We certainly have an emphasis on starting well and that's just footy, teams are going to come back at you and that's to their credit, we just couldn't match it with them," he said.

"In the third quarter we tried to come back at them … they played really well and outplayed us."

Adelaide has a week off before facing the Lions in Brisbane, but it's a break Douglas said he would have preferred to avoid.

After such an uninspiring performance, the 26-year-old midfielder/forward said he would have liked the opportunity to respond immediately.

Douglas said his side would now analyse the Lions' match against the Western Bulldogs on Saturday in order to notch its first win of the season.

"It'd be nice I think to play again [this weekend], to get an opportunity to redeem ourselves," he said.

"[The Lions have] been really good over the NAB Cup and we're looking forward to seeing them play the Bulldogs this weekend.
"I think they're moving the ball really well and they're just winning a lot of contests similar to what we did last year.

"We'll probably scout that game and the boys will watch it and we'll certainly have a good plan in place for when we come up against them next week."

Richard Douglas is a midfielder in AFL Fantasy. He averaged 72.31 points in 2012. Register your team at our AFL Fantasy Hub.

Harry Thring is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow him on Twitter: @AFL_Harry.