ADELAIDE coach Neil Craig says veteran Tyson Edwards has made the right decision to retire, despite the midfielder’s near best-on-ground performance in his farewell game against Fremantle at AAMI Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Edwards announced his immediate retirement after being told he would be dropped for the club’s clash with St Kilda in round 10.

Craig initially refused to guarantee the 321-match stalwart a farewell game, but eventually changed his mind, and the decision paid off on Saturday.

Edwards gathered 32 possessions and kicked two important goals in the 23-point win over Freo, fuelling suggestions his decision to retire was made prematurely, but after the game Craig said the popular club champion had made the correct call.

“My only request to Tyson was to play as hard as he could and I think he did. I think he was absolutely honest when he said the game has gone past him, but I was still confident to pick him knowing that he would dig deep,” Craig said.

“If you went and spoke to Tyson tomorrow morning [he would say that] to keep going to the well is unrealistic and not appropriate. I think it’s been a good call and it’s been a good day for the club with the way it’s worked out with Tyson’s performance and our winning performance, but now we push on without Tyson.”

Craig has a policy not use milestone matches and special occasions as motivation for winning games, but the Adelaide players appeared to draw on the emotion of Edwards’ final farewell regardless.

The performance was undoubtedly Adelaide’s best of the season, but Craig said it was important the club was able to produce the same four-quarter effort without external motivation.

“It’s hard to measure the emotion. We didn’t use it at any stage in the lead up to the game … and we didn’t talk about it today at all, at half time or at three-quarter time. That doesn’t mean that the guys didn’t draw upon it, but we don’t go down that path because we’ve got to be better than that,” he said.

“It was good for Tyson, but from a club perspective it was pleasing to be able to finish a game like that because last week we were really disappointing in the last quarter. We need to keep pushing hard on that, so we play really hard football and set ourselves to do that for the rest of the year.”

Adelaide’s win was even more remarkable considering the club lost star onballer Andrew McLeod (knee) and courageous defender Phil Davis (concussion/collarbone) to injury before half time.

McLeod will see a surgeon about his troublesome knee on Monday, while Davis will have scans to determine the extent of his injury suffered in a collision with Freo’s 122kg ruckman Aaron Sandilands.