LAST week’s loss to Adelaide was another tough day at the office for the boys and another game where we couldn’t put it together for four quarters. We haven’t been able to do that this year and it is something we need to get better at.

We need to have a more consistent approach for a whole game and need to string the four quarters together.

There are a few areas we will need to continue to work and improve on. Most importantly, we need to be more consistent. One of the things that hurt us early was our ball use heading inside 50. We weren’t clean and the quality of ball wasn’t up to the standard we’ve come to expect.

Having said that, we still got our hands on the ball in the forward line but didn’t make the most of our opportunities.

The Crows are a very good team. They’ve got a lot of run and they rebounded strongly from half-back. They use their hands and create overlap. We weren’t quick or sharp enough to defend them in the right manner in the first half. In the second half we went about arresting that to some extent but we didn’t get there in the end because we gave them too much of a head start.

Liam Shiels was a good story to come from the game. Shielsy is our fifth debutant this year and can really hold his head up. He played some good footy on the weekend and it was exciting to have him out there.

Another positive to come out of the game was the return of Xavier Ellis. X is a smart footballer, there is no doubt he is a good inclusion for us. The more game time we get under his belt, the better off we’re going to be.

On the injury front and Campbell Brown and Chance Bateman both had knocks but they’ve recovered pretty well and they’ll both play this week.

Other  good news it looks like Rick Ladson and Stephen Gilham may have a run for Box Hill this weekend. That is exciting for us and hopefully we can get a bit of game time into them over the next couple of weeks and have them knocking on the door sooner rather than later.

It won’t be easy against the Swans this week. They are a team that very rarely has two bad ones in a row. They have a lot of pride, they are a very hard unit and they play well together.

They are well-drilled and they have a very team orientated attitude. They are a hard team to play against because they are always trying to do the right thing at the right time. We will be planning as best we can to play some good footy on Sunday and look forward to the challenge.