Captain Matthew Pavlich says the team are making no excuses for yesterday’s comprehensive loss at the hands of Richmond, describing the result as one of the worst he had been involved in during recent seasons.

“We played very poorly. There’s no reasons, no excuses,” Matthew said at the press conference this morning.

“We had an eight-day break, we had enough time to prepare and were just very poor in a lot of the aspects of the game that we need to be good at.”

Matthew said that the game was disappointing all round but what baffled him most was the uncompetitive spirit out on the ground.

"I'm not sure why, we'll definitely look at the reasons why over the next couple of days. But our intensity and desperation and ability to win the ball was very poor yesterday."

"I just think there was a lack of intensity for whatever reason from certain individuals and the team as a whole. You'd dare say there would be a few (changes) after the weekend."

But according to the Captain, there were also some positives to come out of the loss to the Tigers, particularly the courage shown from Chris Tarrant and Dean Solomon after their heavy clash in the first term.

"They were both pretty sore and it was a great effort for both of the guys to continue, especially Solly to be carried off and come back on, that courage was tremendous."

He also praised youngster Chris Mayne for his impressive start to the season.

"Chris has been excellent for us up forward, his pressure and ability to win the ball has been first class and that definitely showed out yesterday."

The team could turn its season around, according to Matthew, starting with Saturday's clash against Adelaide at AAMI Stadium.

"We'll just have to fight back as hard as we can," he said.

"No one else can help us but ourselves. There's no point looking externally, we have to look internally and find out what the reasons are, pinpoint those and get on with it."

"We've got six days to turn it around against a side who, before the weekend, were in very good touch."

"They will be very hard to beat over there but somehow we have to gel together and get it right and work out why simple things that we can control, like intensity and desperation, weren't there yesterday."