Adelaide coach Brenton Sanderson had earlier said, not disparagingly, that "[Fremantle] won the game but you shouldn't win a game with 33 inside-50s." The Crows had 45 inside-50s but kicked 3.8 from set shots.
"We won every major indicator but the most important one, which is winning the game of footy," Sanderson said.
"You know we won contested ball, we won inside-50s, we won tackles, we won clearances - we just couldn't convert when it mattered and we made some fundamental errors under pressure which is something we have got to get better at.
"Three goals eight from set shots is not going to win you footy games."
Lyon was dismissive upon hearing of Sanderson's comments.
"They're not going to make the eight, you wouldn't think. So we know there's a lot better teams out there. And we know we're not at our best," he said.
The Dockers' coach also put his own, perhaps more relevant spin, on the numbers.
"Both teams had a number of players back all night, so it was whoever used the ball best would be able to find targets inside 50m," Lyon said.
"It was 14 marks (inside 50) to seven. We had more kicks than them. More marks inside 50. More shots on goal. So I think it's a pretty simple equation. Scores off turnovers, 8.6 to 5.6.
"They're a counter-punch team, so we didn't want to kick it to their plus one, Henderson and that, all night. I just thought we counter-punched them really well. I thought we had a first half pretty good on clearance work. The second half fell away, became how the Crows like it. A bit of circle work."
Some of the apparent testiness might go back to the Crows' defeat of Fremantle in the finals last season, but Adelaide has Buckley's chance of it this year after falling to a 7-10 record with five rounds remaining.
However, Sanderson remained upbeat with the Showdown coming up.
"I was proud of the kids. They had an absolute crack tonight and were really good for most of the game but at critical times we made some errors which we shouldn't have when we had the footy and we gifted them a couple of goals," Sanderson said.
"They (Freo) are efficient when they go in and had a lot of shots when they went inside 50. They are unconventional inside-50s, they get you out the back so they got a lot of walk-in goals from our poor defensive structure."
Adelaide midfielder Rory Sloane also said it was one that got away and praised the younger Crows who performed well in a high-pressure game.
"They squeeze you so tight it is really hard to score against them," Sloane said.
"They (the youngsters) know that feeling when we should have won a game but we didn't quite."
