FORWARD Nick Gill says the Crows will use this weekend's bye to try and restore the attacking style of play that saw the club win six of its opening eight games this season.

Adelaide has suffered narrow losses to the Brisbane Lions and Hawthorn over the past two weeks and after Saturday night's defeat at the Gabba, coach Neil Craig identified slow ball movement as an area of concern.

The Crows lived up to their pre-season promise of delivering a more free-flowing and higher scoring game in the first eight rounds, but over the past month, have slipped back into some old habits.

Gill, who played his first game for the season last week, said Adelaide needed to take more risks in order to beat the best teams in the competition.

“Occasionally you just got to have that courage to be able to break away,” Gill said.

“During a game, it’s a high-pressure situation and you can think, ‘hey, I’m not sure I want to lose the ball here’, so you do chip it around try and keep possession rather than taking them on.

“There are going to be errors when you’re taking risks, but if you take risks, you’re going to be very hard to play against.”

Adelaide’s credibility as a genuine finals contender has been questioned in recent weeks with the Crows having beaten just one team, North Melbourne, inside the top eight. But Gill was confident the Crows could match it with the league’s best.

“We believe that our game plan is strong enough to beat any side on our day and we’ve just got to get all things falling together to be able to beat those teams,” he said.

“I feel as though, at certain stages this year, we’ve shown what we can do and occasionally, it has been against lesser opponents, but had we come up against good opponents with that sort of formation and cognitive play, I think we could’ve done very well against the top sides and even beaten them.

“I think the last couple of weeks have been a bit of an eye-opener for us. It’s exposed a couple of things that we need to work on, but it gives us time off this week to think about it and if we can string those things together; I think we can beat Geelong.”

Gill said the break had come at a good time for the Crows, who are sweating on the match review panel’s assessment of an incident involving defender Nathan Bassett.

Ruckman Ivan Maric, who returned to the field after landing awkwardly on the rock-hard Gabba wicket, should be free to play against the Cats next Friday night.

Gill said a top-four berth was “not out of reach”, but added that the Crows weren’t looking any further ahead than the clash with the white-hot Geelong.

“We’ve got a tough opponent next week and hopefully we don’t make it three losses in a row. We’ve just got to address a few of the things that probably led to those two losses and get back on the horse,” he said.

“We’re not setting any specific targets in terms of top four or top eight. It’s a bit of a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason, because you’ve got to look at one week and be able to win that game.

“If you can string a few wins together then you’ll end up where you end up.”