Richmond coach Damien Hardwick sees Sunday's stirring comeback victory over Adelaide as invaluable for his rising AFL club.

But Hardwick reckons the 22-point triumph, which created a three-game winning streak, isn't the most pleasing thing for him.

"The win-loss column is the easy thing to look at," Hardwick said after Richmond's 17.19 (121) to 15.9 (99) win in Adelaide.

"The development of players is probably the one area that we have been really, really happy with this year."

The Tigers trailed by four goals midway through the third quarter, but then blitzed the flagging Crows with 10 of the next 12 goals.

The swift reversal was highlighted by heroics from a batch of Hardwick's developing stars.

Spearhead Tyrone Vickery was superb with a four-goal haul, Dustin Martin (two goals) was damaging and acting captain Trent Cotchin (27 disposals) was influential.

Key defender Alex Rance allowed Adelaide's in-form attacker Taylor Walker just one goal and livewire Robin Nahas continued his stellar season.

All form a maturing core Hardwick sees as having priceless belief to complement their skill.

"One thing I can say about this playing group is they have always got the ability to compete in games," Hardwick said after his eighth win of the season.

"The belief has always been in there, the thing we have just got to get better at is ironing out the inconsistencies."

Richmond's storming finish deflated Adelaide's interim coach Mark Bickley, now with three wins and two losses since replacing Neil Craig.

The Crows' defeat came despite five goals to impressive young forward Jack Gunston and stellar displays from onballers Bernie Vince (35 possessions) and Nathan van Berlo (36 touches).

Inexplicably, Bickley played Brodie Martin as a substitute - just 20 hours after the midfielder played an entire SANFL game.

Martin was summoned when veteran Michael Doughty took ill hours before the match and Bickley had given all three of his emergencies a SANFL game instead of reserving one for such a drama.

"I didn't think it was the difference between winning and losing," Bickley said of the blunder.

Perhaps not, but it didn't help Adelaide's cause - nor that of Bickley as he considers whether to apply for the permanent coaching job.

"I'm not sitting here judging every performance and what that means to me," Bickley said.

"I don't think there was anything today that I walked off the oval and said 'that means I'm not ready (to coach)'."

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