ROSS Lyon is confident St Kilda's 52-point thumping at the hands of Adelaide on Sunday will be an aberration as the Saints set their sights on finals.
The Saints were blown away by the dangerous Crows at Adelaide Oval, never in the game after conceding six goals to one in the opening term.
CROWS v SAINTS Full match coverage and stats
Adelaide boasted a dozen goalkickers in the 19.7 (121) to 10.9 (69) win, with a dominant Taylor Walker slotting 5.0 and taking eight marks, and Izak Rankine, Luke Pedlar and Darcy Fogarty scoring two goals each.
The Saints, ranked No.1 for defence in Lyon's second coming as their coach, had not previously conceded more than 83 points this season.
But Lyon is confident his 6-3 Saints can respond against GWS next week.
"It's one game, isn't it? Everyone is going to have a game where they don't play at their best," Lyon said.
"I would like to think we have been pretty consistent. We'll give them a mulligan.
"It's a long season. If you make the top four, you're going to lose seven ... (but) we would have liked to have been better on a big stage.
"I am really quite buoyant and optimistic we will get back on the horse and get going ... but talk is cheap. We will get to find out next week."
Adelaide's Matthew Nicks lavished praise on his players for their "complete game".
"It was a really great win for a lot of reasons, we did a lot of things right," he said.
"We executed a plan. Our guys were really brave, the way they played; we pressed the game and took them on with the ball.
"And we gave our forwards the best chance possible, so a really complete game."
However, Nicks preached caution at overreacting.
"We have got to be careful. We're not getting ahead of ourselves," he said.
"We are still a young group and we're working through how to become a really good, consistent, strong team. That is where it sits.
"Form is fickle ... but we are going to ride this wave because we have got so much confidence at the moment.
"We get our confidence from being competent. We know we can play really good footy but there's a challenge to do it week-in, week-out."
St Kilda forward Tim Membrey will miss next week's away game against GWS. On the ground after a marking contest, he was landed on by teammate Jack Higgins and heavily concussed.
But Lyon expected prime mover Jack Steele to be fit despite being sidelined by a knee injury late on, while key forward Max King should come in for his first game of the season in place of Membrey.
Nicks said the decision to sub Rory Laird out of the game was more a management call and he expects the star midfielder to play the Western Bulldogs next week.