Adelaide Senior Coach Matthew Nicks says a poor second quarter let his side down against Carlton and learning to halt an opposition’s momentum will now be a focus.

The Crows went down by 10 points at Marvel Stadium on Sunday, but Nicks was proud of his players for fighting back from a 28-point half-time deficit.

“You look at the game and it is pretty clear we lost our way in the second quarter,” Nicks said.

“Our opponents were too good for that period of time and we weren’t able to change the momentum of the game.

“It’s been a reasonably consistent issue for us throughout this year… our ability to limit damage when an opposition has their tails up.

“We will get better. We are getting better week by week, unfortunately we let ourselves down for periods of time.

“But like we know with our group, our DNA, we’re fighters, our boys love a fight.”

Rory Laird (33 disposals) and Ben Keays (30 touches) led the fightback with Taylor Walker, who kicked two clutch goals in the final term to stem the Blues’ run.

But Nicks said capitalising on the Crows’ first-quarter dominance could’ve changed the result.

“I think when you play a young group like we are at the moment, you win games and you learn in games and unfortunately we are learning a lot,” Nicks said.

“Credit to Carlton, in that second quarter they had everything going at the centre bounce.

“I guess that’s a huge issue when you dominate a first quarter like we did and kick six behinds.

“Our ability to really put them under pressure, scoreboard pressure, especially in that first quarter, the game could’ve been in a different position at half-time.

“But we didn’t do it in the end, we didn’t put it between the big sticks.

“We owned that first quarter and unfortunately at half-time we couldn't say that.

“We got ourselves too far behind in the end, just too far for us to quite peg back the difference.”