Adelaide now faces two testing away matches - against the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba next Saturday night and St Kilda at Telstra Dome the following Friday night - before the mid-season break, and then the Crows play seven of their remaining 10 home-and-away-season matches at AAMI Stadium.

Coach Neil Craig barely had time to fully savour the 138-point thrashing of Essendon at AAMI Stadium on Friday night before he was thinking of the Lions.

"It'll be a tough trip away," Craig said. "Any time you go to Brisbane … and it looks like they're back into a bit of form and they've got some outstanding senior players, so it will be a big challenge for us to go up there and get the result we want."

Craig described the win against the Bombers as 'a pretty even performance', and he added: "We had a lot of goal-scorers and we were able to give most guys a fair bit of game time and they all contributed, so we have to walk away very pleased as a club for what happened."

Craig was asked specifically about four players at his post-match media conference.

Of Trent Hentschel's eight goals, he said: "It was good for him. He's been threatening to do that for a long period of time. You never know what sort of confidence that gives Trent. We all understand his development and the way he's come on.

"It's always good for a player to able to take a game by the scruff of the neck and often that really just gives them another kick along. But, of course, next week he'll probably demand a pretty strong defender as well, but that's all part of Trent's education."

Of Mark Ricciuto, he said: "He felt better this week. We've changed his program to a certain extent. He's doing a fair bit of work with Charlie Walsh on the bike and we'll probably continue to do that for a week or two.

"Certainly he looked much freer in himself, but he's carried a couple of big knocks in the past fortnight. As I said about a week ago, his ability to carry injury and play under non-perfect conditions and still perform, not just run out, is as good as I've seen in any player, so it's a real credit to Mark."

Of Brent Reilly, he said: "Brent just continues to improve. He's getting better and better. That's the best way to sum up Brent. He knows exactly where he wants to go in AFL football and, to his credit, he spends a lot of time in trying to improve. He gets a lot of feedback and, importantly, takes it on board, so he'll start to really reap the benefits of that."

And of Ivan Maric, he said: "I thought he was good. He got better in the centre square. He got caught out a couple of times with Essendon's ruckmen pushing forward really hard. And he was probably ball-watching a bit, but certainly I quite liked what I saw. His ability to come in and take over from where Matthew (Clarke) left off is really important for our structure."