ADELAIDE coach Neil Craig refused to use injuries as an excuse for the Crows’ 24-point loss to Collingwood at AAMI Stadium.

“I don’t think that was the issue tonight,” Craig said.

The Crows were without as many as 15 players to choose from with several others under injury clouds heading into the game.

“I thought we were totally outplayed tonight by a pretty good footy team,” Craig said.

The margin didn’t reflect the Pies’ dominance of the game, with the Collingwood forwards booting 11.20 to the Crows’ 9.8.

“The reality of it is that we were totally outplayed and it just shows we’ve got a fair bit of work to do,” Craig said.

Up until three-quarter time the Crows had 10 fewer inside 50s than Collingwood and were inefficient on the occasions they managed to penetrate the Magpie half-back line.

Craig said the discrepancy in forward entries between the two sides was a concern for the Adelaide coaching staff.

“Whenever that gets out of kilter, it’s always a concern for any side unless you’re really efficient. We’re not, so we need volume and we’ve got to look at some ways pretty quickly to at least match it with the opposition, if not get higher.”

Collingwood burst out of the blocks, booting three goals five in the first quarter, but their inaccuracy in front of goal allowed the Crows to close to within a point at half time.

The Pies finished up with 14 more scoring shots than the Crows and Craig said his team was lucky to be within reach at the main break.

“I think the number of scoring shots is always a good indication of the state of the game in respect to the accuracy. We were under pressure most of the night, except for that second quarter and when you’re under that sort of pressure a whole lot of things become sub-standard.”

Adelaide was denied the opportunity to get its running game going, with the Crows midfield well-beaten by Magpie onballers Rhyce Shaw, Dane Swan and Tarkyn Lockyer, who all racked up 20-plus possessions.

“I thought we were a long way off our best of what we’ve seen in the last three weeks, but a fair bit of credit goes to Collingwood. Their running power and ability to free up men was very very good.”

Craig was also impressed by the match-winning performance of Chris Bryan, who kicked three goals straight in the third quarter to burst the game wide open.

Ben Rutten did the job on Anthony Rocca but giving away considerable height, All-Australian defender Nathan Bassett struggled to contain the former Blue.

“Bryan was good. We’ve played pretty short in the backline in the last few weeks, and gotten away with it,” Craig said.

“We could’ve put a Bock or Stevens down there but then that takes away from the forward line. We certainly got caught out there.”

Pleasing for Crows fans were the performances of some of the Adelaide young guns who battled hard in the loss. Craig’s move of Richard Douglas to the forward line heralded a good result with the tiny second year player nailing two goals.

Debutant John Hinge looked composed and gathered 11 possessions playing on Collingwood livewire Dale Thomas, before Hinge strained a hamstring early in the third quarter.

“John Hinge for his first game was pretty reasonable. Richard Douglas has taken a role down back for the last couple of weeks and his capacity to go up forward and do well is a big positive. Ian Perrie was pretty good too,” Craig said.

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club or the AFL.