ADELAIDE co-captain Ebony Marinoff has declared her team's recent finals record is "well and truly not good enough" after the Crows lost a third consecutive preliminary final.

One of the pace-setters of the AFLW in the opening decade of the competition, Adelaide has three premierships under its belt, but has struggled to lift in the backend of the season in recent years.

"To lose three prelims in a row, to me, that's well and truly not good enough. For our club and our expectations and what we set our program to strive for, it's not good enough," Marinoff told Credit to the Girls podcast.

"As leaders, and as a footy club and as a program, we need to get better and we need to really be honest with each other, ourselves and where we're at. Because we're not here to lose prelims and it's not a place where you want to be, but it's where we are.

"You kind of just have to cop it on the chin and accept it for what it is, but also probably a little bit of change, whether that's the system. It's hard; you're not far off it, but you are off it. So you don't need to change too much, but you need to change something. There needs to be change."

The Crows won eight of 11 games in this year's home-and-away season, dropping matches to Brisbane, Melbourne and North Melbourne, before losing again to both the Roos and Lions in the finals.

"'Doc' (coach Matthew Clarke) is optimistic, because you tend to be really negative – you look at Melbourne, for example, this year. A really disappointing period of football (because of injuries), but you can probably take the positives and they got the experience into some of those girls," Marinoff said.

"Same thing for us in terms of some girls really did step up – Madison Newman is coming off a career-best season, Zoe Prowse, Hannah Munyard stepped up in moments, Jess Allan was huge for us.

"You take the positives, but in terms of our execution and our ability to put away teams, (it) was not at the level for the whole season. It was a common theme for us, and I don't think we had a complete game all year. It isn't what you want to say, post-season, but it's a reality. We've got to get to work, review and get back on the horse to keep grinding."

Fresh off her AFLW best and fairest win, Marinoff also touched on her evolution and development from her 2017 Rising Star win, cooking for young housemates Prowse and Lily Tarlinton and her constant quest for improvement.