Young Adelaide defender Andrew McPherson is looking to draw the positives from a tough loss to Sydney on Saturday.

The Crows went down by 33 points against the Swans at the SCG with the players’ kicking inaccuracy hurting the side.

Although disappointed with the loss, McPherson said the Crows showed “periods of the game where we played the way we wanted to play”.

“We hit the scoreboard, but probably our kicking inaccuracy didn’t help us at all,” McPherson told the media on Monday.

“The guys will go away and work on our goalkicking… sometimes you have days like that, where you can’t convert.

“But the promising thing was we had those opportunities in our forward 50.”

With senior defenders Daniel Talia, Luke Brown and Jake Kelly out due to injury, Adelaide was forced to rely on a young core in defence.

“It was a young backline, but the boys held up well,” McPherson said.

“Jordon Butts having the job on Buddy (Franklin), playing on a superstar of the game, I think he did really well.”

Regarding a return date for the injured defenders, McPherson said they were “ticking all the boxes” at training. 

“We’ll find out more in the coming days,” he said.

“Hopefully we can get some experience back there and shore things up.”