For much of 2005, as Adelaide climbed the AFL ladder through sound structure and hard work, a question remained.

How would the Crows fare if their spine was affected by injuries?

A season on and the club is being tested by exactly that challenge.

And midfielder Tyson Edwards said the players remained confident any breaches could be filled.

"It's always a challenge when you lose a few players who regularly play in your side, but it also gives someone else an opportunity," he said.

"If someone's out our whole game's not going to fall apart, we're pretty confident we can replace them."

The loss of Trent Hentschel with a calf strain meant Adelaide had only one first choice key position candidate - fullback Ben Rutten - in the loss to West Coast.

Ken McGregor deputised for centre half-back Nathan Bock, numerous players tried to compensate for Mark Ricciuto's absence from the centre, Ian Perrie and Scott Stevens covered the Hentschel-shaped hole at centre half-forward and Ricciuto was at full-forward in place of Scott Welsh.

It was some distance short of Adelaide's first choice group, but coach Neil Craig said their deputies would simply have to work harder until the A team returned.

In the cases of Bock (back injury) and Welsh (leg stress fracture), that may not be for some weeks.

"We won't know about Trent until midweek," said Craig.

"Nathan's just started running again, we'll do a bit more this week and then all things going well we'll get back into full training the week after.

"He's probably in reality a fair way away, as is Scott Welsh."

Asked if the club was feeling the strain of its losses, Craig agreed, though he would not use it as an excuse.

"Yeah a bit, but we're all going to get injuries and we won't go down that path, we've got to be better than that," he said.

"All clubs get injuries and we won't be any different so we've just got to do better with what we've got.

"What I saw (against West Coast) wasn't lack of personnel."

Adelaide's coolness under pressure, so evident against Collingwood in round one, was missing for long stretches against the Eagles, notably once the Crows had snatched a five-point lead in time on after trailing by 27 at the last change.

Oddly, the team that was so successful holding possession for long periods while trailing the Magpies could not do so when leading the Eagles, who fired off two goals in succession to clinch the match.

"We felt like we just needed one more goal, we had all the momentum in the last quarter, we kicked five straight and I guess you can't hold a team like West Coast down for a whole quarter," said Edwards.

"I don't think we had a big enough lead (to defend), we wanted to keep attacking, we needed a bit more of a lead before we started slowing the play down.

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