ADELAIDE will play finals for the fourth year running after disposing of Essendon on Saturday and coach Neil Craig was full of praise for his players after the 56-point win.

Outside of their West Lakes headquarters, the Crows were widely thought to be entering a rebuilding phase this season, following a high player turnover at the end of 2007 and Craig was eager to give the credit for confounding those predictions to his team.

"It's satisfying for the whole club and I know it's really satisfying, as it should be, for the playing group because in the end the players deliver the product; not me or the management or the other coaches," Craig said.

"It is great recognition for our playing group to be able to be able to put that [talk of rebuilding] aside and just have really high expectations of themselves and be accountable to those expectations through their actions and not what they talk about.

"In that situation now, we get an opportunity to play at a higher level when the finals do come. It's when the best play the best and it's another level of competition so we'll find out a lot more about our squad throughout the finals series."

As well as securing a spot in the finals, the win was Adelaide's first over the Bombers in Victoria in the club's 18-season history.

"I'm really pleased for the playing group to be the first to do that; it's something that they take with them for the rest of their life," Craig said.

"[It's] a fairly short history for our club, but it's good to do it for all our supporters … it was great for them to be able to experience a bit of history as well."

Craig denied being assured of September action would alter his team's approach to the final two weeks of the regular season.

"What we do is we concentrate on trying to play a style of footy going into the finals that will get us what we want," he said.

"We just need to concentrate on what you would call the process, without trying to bore you stupid with that, but we need to concentrate on what creates that sort of result for us.

"There will be enough publicity in the media about where [we] can go and from our supporters, which is fine I understand that, but we've got to keep our mind on the job of what creates that."

Craig was delighted with his onball brigade's ability to stifle the blistering pace of the Bombers for the majority of the match and the spread of goal kickers which reached double figures for the second week running.

Patrick Dangerfield had nine possessions and kicked a goal with his first kick in his AFL debut with Craig pleased he was able to get a feel for the pace of the AFL and added that "he didn't look out of it".