Crows duo Patrick Dangerfield and Tom Lynch says the team is focused on a fast start against Greater Western Sydney at Skoda Stadium on Sunday.

An inaccurate Adelaide slipped 22 points behind at quarter time of the clash with Hawthorn last weekend, and spent the next two quarters playing catch up. In contrast, the Giants stunned league leaders Essendon early to lead by three goals at half time. The Bombers recovered in the second half, outscoring the visitors 14 goals-to five to win by 39 points.

Lynch said the Crows needed to get on top of the improving Giants in the first quarter.

“The Giants definitely showed they can compete with the best in the competition, as they did with Essendon last week,” Lynch told the Down the Guts podcast.

“We’ll need a four-quarter effort. Something we’ve been trying to work on is our starts in quarters and in games. We need to improve on that this week.”

Dangerfield agreed, saying Adelaide couldn’t make a habit of sluggish starts.

“We haven’t been starting well,” he said.

“We need to address that and address it quickly because we can’t allow good teams like Hawthorn, to have a 22-point lead at quarter-time.

“It was nice to play some better footy against the Hawks, but at the end of the day we were very disappointed didn’t come away with the ‘W’ (win).

“We started to play some footy that excites fans and us and we need to build on that.”

Lynch is aiming to consolidate his place in the team in his second year at West Lakes. The hard-working utility has played three-consecutive (full) games and presented particularly well against Hawthorn, hauling in a game-high 11 marks.

The developing 22-year-old has showed enough to earn a contract extension with the Crows.

“My contract wasn’t really distracting me from what I needed to do, but it’s good to get it out of the way and to be here for another year. Hopefully, it can be a few – a lot – more years after that,” he said.

Click the play button above to listen to the podcast in full, and find out what went wrong when Lynchy and Matt Jaensch tried to visit Taylor Walker and why draftee Rory Atkins rates his work in the gym.