“Absolutely,” was Burton’s immediate response when asked the inevitable question on Monday.
“As Ayresy's spoken about before, finals are a completely different ball game and you've got to go in with a positive attitude. We may have lost the last three but we're in the finals and it's simple: If you're in there, you're in there with a chance.
“You can come from third spot and you can come from last spot, and you can still win the premiership. I think on our day, with everyone performing well and performing to our potential, we're definitely a premiership side.
“We know a few blokes are down and we're not all performing to our potential. We know that when we perform to our potential we're one of the best sides in the competition.
“You don't get to round 19 having lost six, and your biggest losing margin is 18 points, without being a competitive side and being a good side. We know that our best is good enough and we've just got to try to reproduce it.”
Asked whether this was one of the best Adelaide teams with which he had been involved (since his debut in 1999), Burton said: “The club set out at the end of last season to recruit a few key forwards and we did that with Wayne (Carey) and also Ronnie (Burns).
“At the start of the year we looked at our squad and thought this is probably the best squad we’ve had for a number of years, and if we want to have a crack, then the next few years is probably our best chance to do that.
“Realistically, I still think it is. We've still got a great opportunity to do something special this year and we've just got to get everyone going the right way and performing well, and we'll see what happens.”
Saturday’s elimination final against West Coast is Adelaide’s first home final since it snuck in by eight points against Geelong in the second semi-final of 1997, and went on to beat the Western Bulldogs and St Kilda to win the first of its two successive premierships.
“It's a great chance for us to give something back to our fans and our members who obviously haven't seen us play a home final here for quite a number of years,” Burton said.
“We're pretty excited about that and we're going to go out against West Coast and give it our all and see if we can get the right result.”
Of the Eagles, who have some injury concerns, Burton said: “It's the old adage, you've got to be careful of the wounded bull. They're obviously a very good side. We'll definitely be wary of them.
“We've had a couple of good results against them this year (wins by 33 points at AAMI Stadium in round four and 24 points at Subiaco Oval in round 19), so we'll try to go to the table with a game plan and hopefully we can get the right result.
“We're the only side to beat a Perth side over there at Subiaco this year so we were definitely buoyed by that result and obviously it gives us a fair bit of confidence going into this week's game.”
When Burton was asked whether he thought recent criticism of the Crows was warranted, he said: “There's obviously criticism when you don't perform near your best and you definitely want criticism.
“As far as the coaching goes, I don't think there's ever any criticism towards Ayresy. All the boys think what he's doing is right. We still have a say. We have meetings and everyone gets to voice their opinions so there should be no criticism there.”
