Although still coming to terms with the disappointment of a Preliminary Final loss, Mark Ricciuto is already looking ahead to 2007.Speaking at Adelaide Airport before heading to Melbourne for the Brownlow Medal count, Ricciuto believes that Adelaide will again be strong contenders for the premiership next season.“It’s been a disappointing couple of days,” Ricciuto said. “To get so close again but not get to the Grand Final is a huge disappointment but something we’ll have to use for inspiration to go one step further next year.“There’s been talk about the window of opportunity (to win a premiership) closing, but I reckon it’s still open and we’ll certainly be attacking the pre-season with a frame of mind that we’re going for the flag.”Ricciuto believes that succumbing to West Coast in the Preliminary Final in consecutive seasons has not added extra pressure to the playing group.“I don’t think the players are real worried about that, particularly,” he said. “I mean, we want to get to the Grand Final, but that’s not playing on our minds. We certainly want to be making the most of our opportunities, and we probably haven’t done that in the last couple of years. That’s something we wanted to getter better at this year, and we failed. So we’ve just got to keep training hard, and identify areas that we need to improve on to go further.”However, Ricciuto admits that his side will need to address a number of areas to take the next step.“We have to play better in finals,” he said. “Our record in the home and away series has been great but we haven’t been able to win the couple of games we’ve needed to get into a Grand Final.“On the weekend, again we didn’t play four quarters of footy; against the best sides that’s what you have to do. You can’t have a lapse in the third quarter and expect to win the game.”With a number of Adelaide’s current stars entering the last years of their careers, increased pressure will be on the younger players to take greater responsibility. According to Ricciuto, the Crows squad “is in very good shape”.“We’ll just take it one step at a time,” he said. “There’s other players that are rotating through the midfield now and I think we’ve seen this year that McLeod, myself, even Goody and Tyson haven’t always been in the midfield. Quite often towards the end of the year we’ve had Thompson, Reilly; these guys starting in there (midfield).”“Our list is better, our depth is better, our younger players are better. Opportunities to play without some leaders in the side (due to injury) are only going to make us a better team.”Having spent a number of weeks on the sidelines frustrated by injury this year, the Crows captain is unsure if he will approach the impending pre-season differently.“I haven’t worked that out yet,” Ricciuto said. “I’ll sit down with Stephen Schwerdt (Fitness coach) and Craigy and work out the best way to attack it. I was the fittest I’d ever been in January last year until I had the groin op and hamstring tendinitis. I just need to be careful, I guess, not to do too much. I certainly don’t want to take the soft approach to pre-season either, and not be fit enough for the start of the year.”