CROWS coach Neil Craig says Saturday night’s narrow NAB Cup Grand Final loss to St Kilda won’t overshadow his side’s impressive pre-season and believes the experience will be invaluable for the club’s younger players.

Craig was unusually animated in the box during periods of Adelaide’s five-point loss and he said it was an indication of the club’s desire to win the game.

“It was probably more the emotion of a loss in obviously the most important game of the NAB Cup that I was showing [rather than because of on-field mistakes],” Craig said after the game.

“It was a tough game of footy and the reason we played with that attitude tonight was because it was important for our junior players to go into a game with the attitude of wanting to win.

“They need to get that experience of what it takes and, when we analyse it, what we need to do better under the real heat of really strong competition and St Kilda provided that tonight.

“Whilst there is big disappointment from the playing group and our club, it’s been a really good preparation for us and we’ve got a lot out of it. We just need to regroup pretty quickly.”

Adelaide had more scoring shots and took the ball inside 50m 11 more times than St Kilda, but paid the price for some poor decisions and execution in moving the ball forward.

The Saints tightened the screws on the previously free-scoring Crows, keeping them to just nine goals, Adelaide’s lowest return for the pre-season.

“It was a slightly different game plan from St Kilda,” Craig said.

“Their game plan exposed us a little bit in terms of a few things that are still ingrained in the way we’ve played that we have to get out of our game. We also saw some good signs that are not quite yet ingrained under that real sort of game plan of St Kilda.

“But the key thing is that we saw enough to suggest that what we’ve been doing over the pre-season is actually having an effect on the playing group.”

Craig praised what was another strong showing from the club’s emerging young midfielders, but said that senior players like Simon Goodwin, Tyson Edwards and Andrew McLeod would have to return to the centre in the season proper.

“I think we had something like ten guys under 30 games tonight and a lot of those guys have played in the midfield and have stayed there for the whole four weeks under a range of conditions,” he said,

“But the rules change now because you haven’t got 26 players and eight on the bench and that effects all sorts of things you do in the match like rotations and how many guys you can bring on.

“We’re able to leave our senior guys in set positions tonight, but that won’t be the case come round one.

“Those guys will play some football in the midfield because they have to just to share the workload.”