Wobbly Adelaide Crows fall off the pace after narrow loss to Fremantle Adelaide midfielder Rory Sloane knows how important the next two games are for the Crows. MALCOLM Blight suggests that it is best to ignore the AFL premiership table until June - and, as a pointer for the real race in September, watch for a team that starts a five-game winning streak in the mid-season. It is the perfect basis for assessing the Adelaide Football Club today. The Crows today are among the also-rans. They may be good enough to challenge for a top-eight berth in the next month. But they are far from the pacesetters coach Brenton Sanderson created last season when he arrived at West Lakes to stir a big club from its slumber. "We are 5-5; we are back in the pack a bit," Sanderson said as he measured the damage of the seven-point loss to Fremantle at AAMI Stadium on Saturday. Last year, Adelaide was 8-2 and ranked third - and consistent at home and away with 4-1 records at AAMI Stadium and interstate. Now, the Crows are wobbly at home where they have a 2-4 record. And, tellingly, the Crows have lost all four games against opponents ranked in the AFL top eight. They have come close to genuine pacesetters Hawthorn and Fremantle in controversial games at home, but fallen short with poor goalkicking, players slipping over and bewildering turnovers doing more damage than umpires. Last year, Adelaide came out of the Blight mid-season litmus test with a 5-1 record that set up the Crows to be a top-four finisher. Now, the Crows face Sydney (home), Richmond (MCG), Gold Coast (away), West Coast (home), Collingwood (MCG) and Geelong (home) in the next six weeks. Each is a top-eight contender. "The next two games are going to be even more important now," says Adelaide midfielder Rory Sloane, who a fortnight ago declared the Crows were entering a season-defining month. While Sanderson has built Adelaide's game on defence - and on Saturday he found another new able young defender with Rory Laird - the real measure of the Crows is in the midfield. It is not the well-balanced and effective group that in the pre-season drew the rave review from Geelong premiership captain Cameron Ling as the game's No.1 midfield group. "We definitely got smacked in the midfield," admitted Sloane of the second-quarter failure that cost Adelaide dearly on Saturday. This is despite lead ruckman Sam Jacobs having 50 hit-outs, a week after he was subbed out of the epic finish against North Melbourne. As former Crows defender Nathan Bassett noted, this huge advantage did not translate to dominance in clearances (46-44 to Adelaide's advantage). "It was their harder bodies and they definitely got inside us in that second quarter," Sloane said. "Spot on," added Jacobs. Mundy, Barlow, Fyfe, Crowley . . . there is a whole swag of them who have hard bodies around the contest. But there is also Stephen Hill and Danyle Pearce who complement that pretty well (as outside midfielders). They are well balanced. Adelaide has lost the two tight scraps with Hawthorn and Fremantle at home by giving up consecutive goals that, as Sanderson noted, made "it look like they got goals much easier while we had to fight for everything." Fremantle midfielder Michael Barlow says: "That is no fluke. We strive for that, we train to play 120 minutes regardless of the scoreboard. Adelaide will need to be that way for the next two months.