Boo me all you like, says Craig

Craig issued the command for the players to organise themselves and chip it around to hang on late in the match to strangle Fremantle`s momentum.

"We weren`t icing anything; it was melting," he said later.

Craig said he hoped the tactic would never have to be employed again, recognising its aesthetic shortcomings, but was quick to make a fuss of his players for their crisp execution of the tactic.

"We felt that we had lost momentum of the game. We had it and we lost it and Fremantle were coming at us," he said.

"We`ve been criticised in the past for losing close games. So I thought to keep hold of the ball for four-and-a-half minutes, which is pretty much what it was, requires from our playing group a lot of nerve.

"Because you`ve got the pressure of trying to keep possession, you`ve got the pressure of the reaction of the crowd. I understand that, but I`m also trying to educate our supporters why we do that.

"It`s a really important experience for our younger group to be able to go through that and keep their nerve and be able to win a game that quite possibly, if we hadn`t gone that way, we may have lost.

"We felt as a group that we were in attack mode and we weren`t icing anything. It was melting. So that wasn`t going to win the game for us.

"So we made a very conscious decision as a club to go the other way and apart from the result that it`s given us, it`s a great experience for our younger guys to go through and get organised on the field."

Craig could also excuse the Crows` tendency to overuse the ball by hand. It was a far better problem to have than the Crows had against Hawthorn the previous week, when they were a stagnant kicking side.

"From our game the previous week, we made a very conscious decision that we weren`t running the ball and attacking enough," Craig said.

"And when you make a change, a really conscious effort to make a significant change, the first thing you see is too much handball.

"We put our hand up for that. But purely from a coaching perspective, it`s what I expected to see and it`s what I wanted to see. Our challenge now is to fine tune it so we don`t run ourselves into trouble.

"I`d sooner have the problem of fine tuning it that way than trying to get guys to do it. Because it takes a lot of courage to play that sort of footy, coming from the game we had against Hawthorn.

"That`s the way it`s going to be and we`ll continue to try and build that attacking part of our games.

"There will be some other days and other quarters when supporters will say, `too much handball`, or `what are you doing?` But we`ll persist and we`re going to get better at it."

Craig was delighted with the efforts from the younger players and the second-tier group, which has inherited much of the midfield responsibility from champion trio Andrew McLeod - who was best afield from a range of positions - Simon Goodwin and Tyson Edwards.

"I thought for our club to regroup, and with the performance of a lot of our younger guys against a really strong-bodied side in Freo, to play reasonable footy in the first half; to lose a bit of the momentum but hold strong in the end when we basically killed four minutes of footy . . . we`re pretty happy," Craig said.

"Towards the end when the heat was really on in the centre square there were (Matthew) Pavlich, (Aaron) Sandilands, (Josh) Carr and (Ryan) Crowley versus (Kurt) Tippett, (Richard) Douglas, (Bernie) Vince and (Robert) Shirley.

"And that`s what we need to do - expose our guys to that sort of pressure and responsibility, and that`s the way we will go."

The only blemish was the kicking for goal, which Craig said remained a work in progress.