AS HAS so often been the case this year, our inability to play four quarters cost us a win on the weekend.

We got off to a pretty good start against Adelaide on Friday night. The endeavour and intensity and the right mindset were all there at the beginning.

The Crows are an experienced group and are very well-drilled. They worked their way back into the game and, although we got our hands on the footy enough in the second and third quarters, we probably lacked the finish and experience to carry out some of our good ball-winning work.

Even in that second quarter we had our hands on the ball quite a bit. We just didn’t make the most of our opportunities. The mistakes were pretty costly and when we turned it over they made us pay. They are a good enough side to do that and that is why they are well entrenched in the eight.

One of our real positives was the performance out of the middle of Ben McGlynn. He worked tirelessly and never gave up. He got a lot of the ball and he is a player who can run all day and has a really good attack on the ball.

Surprisingly, we are still technically a chance of playing finals, but really it is the furthest thing from our mind. We have to keep working on getting better as a team and working harder on the things we need to make sure we continually improve.

If the chance is there we’ll take it, but at this point in time we can’t look any further than this Saturday night against Richmond.

The Tigers have some very talented players in their group and have some very dangerous ball users. Luke Hodge plays his 150th AFL game making him a life member of the Club and the boys will be wanting to put in a good performance for him.

In Stuart Dew and Max Bailey we have a couple of blokes pushing for selection who could give the side a real boost.

Dewey should be ready to go this week so his name will be thrown up at selection. He has a lot of experience and we have to weigh up how we go about it.

Max has been playing some good footy for Box Hill since coming back from his horror run with knee injuries and has trained really well. I’m sure he will be putting his hand up and there is no doubt he will be discussed in depth at match committee.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.