Neil Craig insists Adelaide has 'advanced as a football club' this year, despite the Crows' second successive loss to West Coast in a preliminary final - 16 points at Subiaco last September, 10 points at AAMI Stadium on Saturday.

"We set ourselves to play in a grand final and we weren't good enough to do that," he said. "Does that mean you self-destruct because you're a failure? No. That would be totally irresponsible and immature of us as a football club to do that.

"What we do recognise, though, (is) we're not a top-two side. We're not far off … clearly we're not a top-two side, we're three downwards. That's about where we're at and it's our responsibility to get better."

Later, during a long post-match media conference, Craig lamented: "The best people, the best teams find a way to win. We haven't yet … we'll push on, sometimes you've just got to go through this."

Earlier, he had said: "We need to keep building our squad … our execution needs to be better. With the nature of our squad at the moment, our teamwork needs to be better, our structures need to be better, we need to perform at a higher level for longer periods of time."

Craig said he did not agree with a 'premiership window' of opportunity, and he added: "I think that's a myth. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise but I haven't been yet. I think it's a cop-out - an easy throwaway line to say, well, it's been too hard for us.

"We'll continue just to build our squad, whether the players are 30-plus or 18, and identify people who can play in winning finals."

Pressed, Craig said: "I think we've started to add at the bottom end. When I first started as a senior coach we admitted we'd been less than responsible with the way we'd gone about building the squad.

"But we've started, we've put in some really good processes, we've got some fantastic young talent coming through and you saw some today on show. And you've seen some this year and the last few weeks.

"So those guys will continue to get better and better, and that's my responsibility as coach, to make sure we - I - create an environment where they can learn very, very quickly, not just say, 'they'll be better next year and the year after'. We need to be better than that, we need to accelerate their learning, and our selections in the draft this year will be crucial."

Asked how much Rhett Biglands' knee injury had affected the Crows' performance against the Eagles - he went off 14 minutes into the second quarter with what was said later to be 'a slight medial ligament strain' - Craig said: "Only a little bit.

"Ideally, we wouldn't want it when you're up against (Dean) Cox and (Mark) Seaby. But I thought Matthew Clarke's effort was sensational to continue on and to be able to handle that reasonably well. It certainly wasn't the difference between winning and losing."

Craig said the Crows were responsible for their 1-6 record against West Coast in their past seven clashes, and it was their responsibility to change it.

And, stressing how he wanted to 'congratulate the crowd', he said: "To get over 50,000 people to the prelim - and I appreciate that tickets are not cheap - and for the South Australian crowd to come and support us like they have, not only today but the whole, year, it's a big thank-you from our playing squad. They certainly played their part so thank you very much for that."